Episode Transcript
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Collector Perspective. This is season four. This season we're focusing on what makes America stronger, starting with our local community. We're creating a digital footprint by shining a spotlight on the amazing work of organizations and non profits making a real difference in North Florida.
And who knows, every once in a while we might toss in a controversial topic just to keep you on your toes. Like, do you actually need to use your turn signal while driving? Or is that just a suggestion? Tune in as we highlight those building a stronger, more connected future. One community at a time. Hey everybody.
Welcome to the collective perspective podcast. This is Jeff. And today I have my friends, Travis and Jawad, say what's up, fellas. Hey, what's up, everybody? Hey! This episode of the podcast, we are thrilled to host Mr. Steve Barsotti, a renowned figure in the world of audio engineering, education, and experimental sound art.
With a career spanning over 30 years, Steve has not only made significant contributions to the field, but also inspired countless students through his teaching. Just like the Art Institute of Seattle where him and I met his innovative approach to sound has empowered individuals and enriched the cultural landscape, providing that learning and creating music can strengthen both personal growth and community ties.
Join us as we delve into this journey, insights, and the transformative power of sound, Steve. Happy to be here, fellas. It's nice to meet you guys. Good to see you again, Jeff, as always. Steve, I've known 22 years. Yeah. 22 years. When did you finish? When were you, you know, with, with my students. Graduated in 05.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as my students graduate, I have no memory of exactly when they were there. You're just one big group of people. So I never remember. It's like, did you graduate like five years ago or 20 years ago? Well, then I know you graduated a long time ago. Yeah, I did. Thanks. You were trying to make me younger.
I appreciate that. I also want to take the moment, do a memorial for somebody. You know who that is. I sure do. And that's our good friend Tom, who died in 2009. Yeah. Tragically. He was still at the Art Institute, right? Yeah, he was up there all the way to that day. Him and his wife went up on a vacation. He just bought his new Mercedes Benz that he was so happy about.
Right. And, or was it a BMW? One of the two, it was his dream car, him and his wife. He got his fancy car going on. They drove up to a wedding and after the wedding, they went back to their hotel, but tried to open the door to the wrong room and he was shot and killed. Oh, good Lord died on the way to the hospital.
That's a, that's very tragic, very tragic to Steve and I, I know that affected my life pretty greatly. And, and you were right in the epicenter of it all. Being right there in Seattle. Yeah, that was intense. That was a, that was a really hard couple of weeks there dealing with the student population and the faculty and his family.
And it was just such a tremendous, tremendous loss. I think we owe it to him to still talk about him here years and years later. And like Tom, we still love you, man. And if you're listening, we want you to know that we love you. And that all of my data is backed up in three different locations. Right. Uh, he, Tom would make every student go back to grammar elementary school type stuff and make you physically hand, right.
What was it? 150 times. Digital audio does not exist unless it's backed up in three different locations. And I still, we still don't forget that. Yeah. And he actually, his name has been turned into a verb to faffle a hard drive means to go into it and erase it completely. And he would do that. He'd go into the studios and randomly just erase hard drives to the point where he would piss me off because he would accidentally erase software sometimes, and I'd have to go in there and reinstall pro tools or do something because But he would do that to teach the students.
It's like, this better not be your only location. And I've kept that through me my entire teaching career. I've taught every single one of my classes what it means to faffle a hard drive. And I teach them that the hard way by faffling hard drives and letting them know that their work is gone. Tom was the engineer for Heart.
He was involved with Nirvana. He was very influential in the Recording industry and it was a heavy loss. His now his last name is F Heavy. Faffel Faffel. Faffel. D-P-F-E-A-F-F-L-E. Faf or something like that. We know how to pronounce it. At least . Exactly. Faffel. Well, hey Steve, not to steal your glory because you've definitely made a huge impact.
Could you explain your extensive career in less than 10 words?
Yeah, that gives you a sentence. Yeah, no kidding. My career has mainly been in teaching. The, the primary focus of everything I've done since I started this whole thing was, was teaching. Now in the, process, it's like, what gives me the right to teach audio? I was an experimental, I still am an experimental audio artist, and I've been working on art works, sound works since the late 80s, early 90s.
And through that process, I had to learn technology in a really, really weird way. I think about the way that I've been teaching audio technology for production over the years, the way I taught you, Jeff, and the way I've taught all the students. I didn't learn it that way. I learned it sort of ass backwards.
But in that process I started teaching workshops and became really engaged in the idea of that being a way to earn a living and started teaching college classes and here I am. I still do production, most of it's audio post production, film and video kind of stuff. I don't do music projects. Occasionally I've got a couple of music projects under my belt.
Honestly, I don't like listening to music that I don't like listening to. So it's hard for me to, to mix records and record records. I was just telling Jawad, I was like, if I was ever to come on to back into the studio, it'd be music I wanted to work on. Nobody else, if I wasn't interested, I wouldn't. Well, it's interesting.
You know, you remember Kevin Bressler, of course, I used to ask him, it's like, what kind of music do you like Kevin? And he would say music that pays. And it, you know, it speaks to this fact that it's, um, engineering, And being a music producer and a music engineer is something beyond your particular taste in music and thinking about music and sound as combinations of frequencies and you're blending these things together as a craft and it really supersedes any notion of personal taste.
You know, it's, it's an art form in itself. It's absolutely a skill. It's fascinating. It's something I've never been able to really kind of dig myself into because of that hang up that I have about About music and what I like to listen to, but sure. A lot of engineers are like, I like to listen. I want to work on music that I like.
Remember Jay Follett? Yeah. Same thing. He had an insane ability to dissect music and just not even think about it in terms of whether he liked the song or not. But really liked the frequency components and really liked the compression on the snare drum and really liked, you know, the, the, the reverb effect that was on the vocal.
And that was his engagement. And that's what a lot of audio engineers are really into with the music that they, that they make. I don't think it's necessarily the music for me, it's more of who is the artist. Yeah. And it just, it may be a lyrical thing, I was, I'm sure you guys have a wide variety of music influence that I like.
Yeah. You've had a long and diverse career, could you share what initially drew you into the world of audio and sound engineering? Photography. My father was a fine arts photographer, and there was absolutely this emulation phase that I had. And I was, um, into photography, and started studying that in school before I started studying audio.
And it was Through taking a video class because I wanted to extend my photography into the moving image and alongside of that I took an audio class and given the nature of the art school None of these were like straight production technical classes and the sound class just really blew my mind I mean, I'd already been fascinated with music I can't say that my interest in music was any more or less special than anybody else growing up in the 70s with you know classic rock and Getting exposed to industrial music and hearing those timbral changes and style changes and all that kind of stuff And I was really geeked about all of that I used to say that My favorite part of the pin floyd records were all the introductions to the songs because of all the little sound stuff that they did Especially dark side of the moon, but the sound class really blew my mind And the idea of being able to contribute to that of, of sound and music.
And, you know, I never had a music background. I don't, I never played in a punk band. I never played piano or guitar or anything like that. Still don't. This was sort of an into this world that I was really fascinated with. And then, like I mentioned earlier, uh, that turned into like teaching people how to use this gear.
And that became my, you know, stepping stone into my career as an instructor. Uh, all along it's about. just thinking about this technology creatively, often using it in a way that's not, that's sort of unconventional, not necessarily the way it's designed. Um, but yeah, it started with, you know, just an early exploration and a love of, of what sound is.
And, you know, Then realizing that technology, uh, has such an important role in capturing and manipulating and playing back sound. When you said photography, I thought you were going to say phonography. Well, phonography is something that comes up later in my life. And that refers to the idea of basically field recording.
There's a lot of different types of people that go out and capture recordings of the world. There's nature recordists who are very engaged in capturing and documenting the sounds of birds and wolves and whatever ends. A phonographer, from my definition, is somebody that captures sound for the sake of its, for its own sake.
In other words, when I go out and record something in the world, it's less important what that was a recording of, and more important that the qualities that I'm listening to, the textures that I'm listening to, are attractive to me. If you think about the way that we listen to music, uh, yeah, there's a good chunk of us that will, will dig into a particular bass part, progression or chord progression or, you know, listening to the, but a lot of times music is, music sets the hairs on your arm to go and music sets that kind of emotional response.
And you have an ability to listen to a music that's really separated from the fact that it's a piano and keyboards and vocal and guitar and whatever, that it's this sum total. And it's just sort of engaging set of like sonic massage. Phonography, to me, represents that idea with everything else sonically in the world.
Interestingly enough, the comparison to photography is that my photography was very much about capturing minute aspects of the world that aren't initially and immediately available, i. e. stuff that just, that we don't notice as we walk down the street or we're engaged in it. And my phonography is very much a part of that.
Capturing sounds in the same things, little corners of sound, a little bitty sounds. I didn't think about that until much later in my career, about how my phonography reflected my old approach to photography. Well, you rubbed off on me a lot, being an instructor at the school. I beg your pardon? You rubbed off on me a lot.
Not in a, not in a weird way. Let's say, uh, you influenced me a lot. That's better. Let's edit that one. Well, just get. You rubbed me off a lot. He influenced you how one day you said the, uh, just doing soundscapes and you gave us a, uh, a footage of, uh, Blade Runner. You remember that Simon? Well, yeah, that was one of my favorite assignments.
I went out there and this is where we. The experimental side of audio, we went out and I remember capturing and Steve's right, it's capturing the quality of what you're recording, not necessarily what you're recording itself. And it's more of like, uh, if I had to use. Someone stepping in or running in rocks, uh, pebbles.
How would I be able to do that if I were to just take video and, and go with a blank canvas of audio? And, uh, and, and being able to recreate that, well, I would have to have that sound sample. Right. And it not necessarily is always that sound sample that is all that you can hear because you have to have the shoes, the wind, uh, all of the other elements in that picture to really make it sound like it really is.
They use it in motion picture a lot. It's called sound Foley. If you don't know, that's the art really, right? Is a Foley art is what the art is called. And those are the sounds that you're talking about is, is capturing. I remember recording the back of my fan and then taking a clip of the wave file and is boom now it's the sound of my dog barking and just, uh, kind of just, you know, Blending that all together.
But for the Blade Runner, I remember, uh, eating Cheetos, stepping on leaves, rocks, and a bunch of stuff mixed together at different volumes and different shapes coming in to make those fireballs come alive that were never really there, it was just. Yeah, and it's, it's interesting, the sounds and all that stuff you just described about like the minute detail we put in to sort of flesh out.
And what we're trying to do is create this sense of believability so that we forget we're watching a collection of images and hearing a stream of different qualities of sound. But we're actually in this environment and we're just enthralled by the, by the story, the sequence. We suspend our belief. For a bit to be able to dive into that.
And with sound is a huge part of that. It really establishes our sense of presence in a space. Yeah. I was just telling my wife today, I was like, what's really cool is that I created something. I wrote it, then I recorded me and others saying it, and then I put it together. And now I'm putting picture to it and creating a story based off of what I wrote and then being able to go to someone and go, Hey, look what I did.
And it's just. Wow. Uh, to be able to have the ability. I thank you for a lot of that, by the way. It's awesome. And a question for you, uh, in teaching audio engineering, music production, and sound art, you've given students a set of skills that can really empower them. How do you think mastering these skills?
Well, I love this question. I was looking through these questions, you know, clearly before and this one really gets the core as to why I do this. There were two people that ran this place called Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago that I worked at for a while. Their names were Lou and Don Molassi. And Dawn was this incredibly pragmatic Midwestern woman who just didn't take shit from, from people, didn't take shit from prima donna artists, was all about like, if you want some shit done, do you have to do it yourself?
We were having a meeting one day about, uh, why are we teaching workshops? As a non profit organization, we had to really scrutinize every little detail of what we did. Funding was scarce and blah blah blah blah. And so we're having this conversation about the idea of doing workshops and why we're doing them.
And somebody asked the question, so why are we doing this? Table was quiet and then dawn blurs out. So we can teach people how to take care of their goddamn selves. And, um, That struck with me for the rest of my life. I really got involved with the notion of the sense of empowering people. And it also ties into early in my teaching career, and I still feel this, but I'm, I'm less sort of vocal about it.
This idea of American culture. I went through this period and I mean, like I said, I still feel this way, but I went through this period was real vocal about the idea that I didn't want the notion of American culture to be defined by some sort of limited group of people. And it was probably a political reaction to as this country's gone back and forth from liberal to conservative presidencies and administrations.
That I wanted the idea of American culture to come from the people that live in this country, and it's such a diverse country, and it's such a huge country, and there's all kinds of different perspectives. Art and music and film, all of these things are definitely a part of this idea of being American.
Jazz is a great example of an American art form. It's truly and utterly, uniquely American. There's no place else in the world that this could have developed like it did because of the combination of influences. When I started thinking about learning how to use this technology and my own approach was to figure out how to use this so that I could get across these little sound projects that I was doing and having a great time doing that and having a great time learning more about the technology, which would, enabled me to do more with this work and then started teaching workshops, it dawned on me, tied with that statement from Don, that I was put into a position to be able to help people.
Instead of engineering for them, I was starting to teach them how to engineer for themselves so that they could create their own work. And this idea of that question is that I think that It changes a person because when you're able to do it yourself, you have the utmost control. When you're trying to translate your ideas through other mediums and through other people, inevitably it changes.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think that there can be some interesting results from collaboration if it's put in that context. But like, for example, just a little side example, um, my wife and I just purchased a rental house for fix up and to rent out. And in other circumstances, I probably would have done a lot of the work down there.
But given current circumstances, which I don't need to go into, I can't. So we have to hire a contractor. And it's a bit frustrating to have to go through this other entity to be able to explain what I want done for the fence or the floors or what have you. Whereas when I do it myself, because I do have some capacity to do that, I'm empowered to be able to make my own decisions and work my way through these problems and come up with my own solutions.
So teaching students how to use this technology is my way of saying, okay, right. You want to make music. You want to put that music out there. You want to add to your sense of culture and community and society. Well, let's learn how to use this technology and I'm not going to judge what you do with it.
That's completely your business, but I want you to be able to use your voice. You know, we can talk metaphorically about the microphone and the voice, literally and figuratively, the idea of someone's voice and amplifying that voice through the use of technology. To pick up a microphone and then understand how to plug it into a pre amplifier and then an amplifier and then a speaker.
And how to manipulate that voice and then to use that as a means to project your ideas and to put yourself out there in culture, I think is, I think is profound. I think it's really great. And like I said, that's been my driving focus for teaching for all of these years. I also enjoy teaching audio.
There's a lot of clients that don't understand what equalization is and compression or even the signal path. I Once you know the signal path of something, there is troubleshooting skills skyrocket in the rest of your life, because then you take those troubleshooting skills and you apply it to everything in your life, as I'm sure Steve does and Jawad does.
Not to discredit the people that don't know audio, but if you troubleshoot like us, You can come up with a pretty quick solution when I'm trying to get volunteers, uh, at church, I do sound at church is to tell them, do you want to learn a skill and that skill can make you money. Travis is a nurse. He learned a skill.
That's what he specifically went to. It wasn't just the science behind it. It's like, uh, some people, I, I say, Hey, um, I can tell you how to put this car together and then completely take it apart. Reassemble it and then drive as fast as I want with this car. That's what you've given me. The ability to do is to do exactly that.
I can take it apart, put it back together and. And find a solution and, and drive it. Being able to teach a skill like that is far beyond just how to do it. But the science behind it, I can see the blank look in some people's faces when I try to explain to them. And my current job is I can have a highly technical conversation with you, or I can have a very dumbed down conversation with you.
So you will understand what I'm trying to tell you. You could see that their mind is just blown and I go, yeah, isn't science great? That's what we're doing here. What you're teaching is science. It's science, uh, and the beauty about this science. There's a science in the really objective parameters of the technology that we use, but it's completely paired with the art of what it is that you do with this technology.
There is the, um, here's what a mixing console does. Um, but there is an artistry to engineers that know how to mix and know how to blend these things together. You have to have an ear for it too. Not everybody has that. You've taught in institutions across the country and mentioned many students looking back.
How does it feel to know you've had such an impact on people, some of whom you taught over 20 years ago? I mean, that's one of the most rewarding parts of this gig, is keeping a connection with people like Jeff and other students, and seeing that they've taken this stuff to heart and they've made it a part of their lives.
You know, and it's not to say that students who ended up not doing audio or any type of failure or anything like that, you know, it's just because I think education is beyond the specifics of what you're learning. I think it grants you the ability to understand how to become educated in other directions.
But when I interact with students that I've had, you know, over the past. 20, 30 years, and I see that they're grown up, that they have families, that they're productive, that they're happy, that they're healthy. It's just amazing, you know, and it, it really is wonderful to, to have been a small part of their lives and maybe kick them in the right direction.
You know, it's hard for me to take credit for people's success because it's up to the people to create their own success. I mean, I'm the guy that just points you in the right direction. And when people follow that direction and they stay with it, yeah, it makes me happy not to get gushy, but you know, Jeff, every time I hear from you or I see your posts or talk to you, I'm, I'm just so proud of the fact that you, you're still doing this and that you're engaged in your own community.
And I mean, that to me is, goes back to the last question about. You know, this idea of, of, um, people, uh, contributing to their own sense of self expression and self sustenance. And, um, that is an incredibly important part of, of my gig. So I just love it when I meet students and see that they're happy and engaged.
It's great.
Have you had like really students that have done exceptional things? Like you've got guys that like, okay, one of our have won Oscars or Grammys or, um, besides Jeff, Jeff's just incredible. He's, he's one of your students. Yeah, I've had students, you know, that have gone on tours with major, major acts. There was one student that came through That, uh, he was an interesting case.
He's down in, in San Francisco, or up in San Francisco for me. Working at Skywalker Ranch. Last time I saw him, he was like, Yeah, I had lunch with Walter the other day. He was talking about Walter Murch, the guy who did the sound design for, for Apocalypse Now and, you know, that stuff. Oh, nice. He's, he's worked with, um, um, Lucas and, and that whole group, you know.
And I've got another friend. He's the recording engineer for DC Comics, um, video games. So he was recording Mark Hamill and, uh, Oh God. Now I'm, I'm spacing on the dude who did Batman for years. He passed away. That quintessential nineties Batman voice. Um, so yeah. Yeah, there's, uh, there's plenty of students who have gone out and done incredible things.
But, you know, honestly for me, sure, there's this allure to the big time. There's this, and I even talk about this when I'm teaching. It's like if you think about the world of, of, of audio, it's kind of like the world of sports. Most people see that upper small triangle of popular music, popular film, or the major sports leagues, right?
What supports that upper triangle is an incredibly vast base of people that are doing this work and you've never heard of them. There's sports teams all over the country that are having a great time, are doing great things, you know, and there's things like this podcast and there's bands playing out there right now that you'll never hear of that are happy, Some of them are making money off of it.
There's session musicians all over the place that are earning money by playing gigs and playing in studios. There's people doing sound for films. I mean, how many times do you actually The only reason we sit through credits right now at movies is so we can see that Marvel, like, after credit shot. That's the only reason we sit through that stuff these days.
And we don't even still read the credits. But all of those people are part of those processes of making films. In Seattle and San Diego, I've been involved in these indie film communities. There's just countless people that are really passionate and doing their work. Honestly, I'm more engaged in them than the ones who, it's not that the guy who works for Skywalker Ranch isn't interesting, or I mean, clearly he's successful, but you know, he's in that upper echelon, that really small triangle at the top of the pyramid.
And that pyramid is being supported by a whole bunch of people doing stuff, you know, and that's where our culture is. That's where the reality of the American people is at, is in this base, not that upper echelon. That's the stuff that I was, I was sort of reeling against earlier in this conversation about the definition of American culture, uh, when I was younger, not being dictated by popular media.
It's created by the reality of the day to day of who we are and what we do. And to that end, those are the students that I'm most happy to hear from, because they're all in their corners. And, you know, Jeff, somewhere in this paperwork, was writing about me being all over the country. I've only actually taught in three cities, but I've got students that have moved all over the country, and they're all doing their own thing.
They're all integrated into their communities. And that, to me, is the super exciting part. You brought up culture, and I wanted to hit on that a little bit. You've been working in audio for quite a while. We all grew up through the sounds of the 90s. I know I did, listening to some of the techno back in the day.
In that time, how would you say, or how have you seen music and sound evolve from that time and shape American culture? Well, from my perspective, and I realize that I'm in a different place in my life and there's a whole lot of things that I'm missing. When I was growing up, late teens, early 20s, this would be the late 80s, early 90s.
In Chicago. was a record label called Wax Tracks, and there was a record store on Lincoln Avenue, and they were the center of a scene, um, of what was to become what's called industrial music. It was sort of the second wave of industrial music, the first wave having taken place in, like, Germany and in England.
Um, but this was, like, Ministry and Front 242 and Frontline Assembly and KMFDM and My Life with the Thrill Kill Cults and Pigface and all these bands. And it was a scene. You could go to this record store and see these guys. You could see them out in town. They would always play local gigs, small gigs.
Some of them started touring the country and were around a little bit less often, but they were all there. The nineties also had the grunge movement in Seattle where Nirvana and Sound Garden and Alice in Chains and all of these bands, um, were there in the streets and the clubs and they weren't. Like, famous bands, they were people gigging, and you would go and see these guys, and then you would drink with them afterwards, and that happened in Seattle while I was in Chicago, so I didn't get a chance to do that.
Earlier in the, in the 80s, in the Bronx, there was hip hop, and there was Run D. M. C., and there was Eric B. and Rakim, and there was KRS One, and you could go into the clubs and see these guys and hang out, be a part of these scenes. Southern California had the punk scene in the late 70s. I mean, there were all these really kind of specific locations that fostered.
What have become incredibly important genres of music. And I don't see that as much today. Now I fully admit that I might just be too old and I'm not looking in the right places. Cause I know there's people making music in the corners of this country and I'm fairly confident. I'm just not in touch with the scenes and I'm okay with that.
But at the same time, I still feel that the inclusion of the Internet and the distribution of music that way have created a whole different type. Like my kids don't listen to music by going out to the clubs and meeting the bands that are playing. They listen to their Spotify playlists or YouTube channels or TikTok artists and things like that.
And mind you, there's a lot of great stuff that's happening in those realms, but it's a very different type of exposure and experience that we have with music and musicians. So my change has been from being in the scenes themselves. I mean, there's a funny story. I'm in Chicago. It's the early nineties ministry is recording the video for burning inside.
Somehow I got invited to be a part of this process. And I'm in the video. If you look really close at one of the closeups, there's a wild haired kid screaming and beating on a fence. And I'm one of those guys. So I'm in this video, which means that I'm that. Not that I'm in, but that I'm a part of that community.
I go into the bathroom and there's Nevek Ogre and Al Jergensen from Skinny Puppy and Ministry shooting heroin. And they asked me if I wanted to join them, you know, and I'm like, um, my immediately my life goes in two different directions in my mind. I'm like, this could be interesting, but I'm, I'm good.
Thanks fellas. And shake it off and leave. I don't see that these days. I don't see that kind of. like identifiable scene in a specific location tied to an identity like Wax Tracks or the Bronx or Seattle. And I think a lot of it has to do again with this sort of the digitization or the Internet's role in how people access this information.
But, You know, who knows? That's pretty interesting though. I see how, what you're saying there, each region within the United States has its own specific sound. Yeah. And even in Detroit, we had Ritchie Houghton and a couple of these other guys using the, the, the blues and the, and the jazz in that era, incorporating it.
There, there's a distinct Detroit sound in techno. Yeah. That's kind of interesting that that's kind of, Gone away, as you say, with the interconnectedness of the internet with everybody, all, there is no one sound or defining sound in a, in a region anymore. When you were mentioning in front two, four, two, I was like, what is the first industrial band I ever thought of?
And like how I thought that was kind of weird. I actually saw them here in Jacksonville at the milk bar back in the day. Or even listening to prodigy for the first time and going, what the hell is this? And then listening to it and then falling in love with it. The difference in punk rock scenes and oi music versus England versus New York versus Southern California, all three different types of punk.
I think you're right, there really is, uh, I used to say, how many, how many more love songs can you write? Uh, how many more times can you say I love you? Uh, how many other ways are there to say I love you? Yeah, love songs keep on going up. Some very explicit. Apparently a lot. Yeah, it's kind of wild how you're right.
It's kind of like it's almost. Dead in a way, right? They used to say punk rock was dead. And I, you know, when this first, when I read this question to myself, felt like the difference between dynamics and recordings too, is different. And today's society, music isn't even considered music anymore because there's no dynamics.
It's just a static. And, uh, if you were to, if you were really to analyze music today that they're pushing out, um, it, it has no dynamics in it. You know what I mean by dynamic. Is that why you're getting back into the phonographs? That's exactly why. I was just telling my, I was just telling my worship leader at church, I'm like your mix sounds better because, your stage monitor mix sounds better because I'm listening to the records again.
Nice. And I, I'm able to feel and hear the dynamics of everything in the sonic jigsaw puzzle where everything has to fit together to make it seem like, Hey man, I know this is a speaker in front of me, but it sounds like a record right here. And it also helps to have good musicians behind you too. We kind of make that, we have to assume with that, that that's at the beginning.
Is, is talented musicians that know how to work their instruments, know how to work the particular type of space, whether it's a stage or a studio, and understand what it means to play in front of this technology. Jawad here owns his own recording studio, that's the one we're sitting in. He's worked on many major artists.
I was going to mention, uh, another well known person that you, you're going to put a big smile on your face right now is Eric Raber and how he went on to see there's that smiles look for, uh, and I, I still keep in touch with him, man, he's still, uh, hitting it solid with Sony and I definitely feel you on the unsung heroes, all of the personnel and faculty that work behind the scenes that actually make the album or the project work for real.
Absolutely. You talk about the cherry on the top is actually the artist. They are basically the cherry on the top when the cameras come on, but everything building up to him looking like an artist or being on stage and presenting himself as a professional artist or the magic about that artist is the guys that work behind the scene.
Right. Absolutely. I mean, and they are unsung heroes. Michael Jordan didn't win that ring by himself. You know, it took him a long time to get to that position. And it was only after they had finally put together a team of people with a team of coaches that they started to figure that stuff out. But I mean, he was absolutely the spotlight.
But it took that entire community to make that happen. And unfortunately, we just lightly, um, I shake my head constantly because they don't give Jerry Krause the credit he deserved. He's the guy, he's the magic man behind putting these components together on that team. And that is a Jeff. That is, that is guys that put the components together to make that, that machine run beautifully.
It's the programs that are before that level in the colleges. There's a good friend of mine who's also a student at the Art Institute. Who played professional basketball in Australia and Denmark. And that often becomes an example I have in terms of making this comparison between music and sports is that he was super happy with his career.
He did really well. It was a good player. He had thought about trying pro. Occasionally, but wasn't where he wanted to really go, but there's an entire echelon of people playing basketball and doing really well at it, and we don't know anything about them because they're not LeBron James and Michael Jordan.
Yeah, but we do know about them. We know about them because I'm looking at some of your, the fruits of your labor right now. I'm looking at Jeff. Yeah. I mean, you spread those seeds around and look, look at the fruit that it bear forth. He's an incredible engineer, musical mind. He's really, really great at what he does.
But you sowed a seed of education into him. You bear forth the fruit from your friend. So nothing's in vain. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I agree with you. So you're like this beautiful farmer that's just putting these seeds out in the world. And all of these incredible engineers and sound guys is being birthed from your efforts to teach.
in the community and teach young people and mold their minds and challenge them. Steve's own minions. It's incredible, man. All these little miniatures, Steve's influenced by Steve. He rubs off on a lot of people. I'm just kidding. Going on on that, what message or advice would you give to those just beginning their path in audio and sound and Considering the impact you've seen on individuals and society.
I think the biggest thing is, you can be a part of this stuff in a myriad of ways. In fact, you were just talking about this before. Travis, you said you're a nurse, but you're also involved in music and audio as well. You can make music and audio your career. You can go look for jobs in studios, in live sound, in the film industry, in the gaming industry.
You can make a living producing work, creating work, technically supporting audio. There's a lot of different ways that you can. You could earn a living doing this. You can also contribute just by being in the music industry and performing. And one of the things I used to say when I was at the art Institute in my orientation speech was that there's just as many bands in the graphic design program as there are in the audio program.
And what I mean by that is that in culinary, for that matter, you know, I mean, just all of the programs, but. There are people that decide that they're going to do something to earn a living. That's what pays the bills. The type of society we live in requires that we go out and work and earn money and then use that money to pay for all the things that we need in our world.
And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. You can do that by doing audio or you can do that doing something else while you also do audio. Earlier I was asked a question about, like, student success stories, and there are students out there that are not doing audio as their main gig, that they do all these other things, but they still have a studio at home that they produce music in, or they still go out and play in bands on a regular basis, you know, they gig, or they work in a recording studio at night.
And they don't really earn much money, but they do it because they have to, because they really want to be a part of that. So I think the advice that I give people is to really kind of think about where you sit in that spectrum. And it really is the spectrum of your involvements. Do you, and this, you know, this is me talking to my students every single term.
Do you want a job doing this or do you just want to make beats and make them better? Because there's a distinction in terms of how I teach you. If you want to make beats and make them better, yeah, let's have some technical conversations. If you want to do this for a living and be in the industry, I've got to have a whole other conversation about attitude and professionalism and, you know, Humility and all these other sorts of things that you're going to need to understand as you work your way through that process, and it's a process, and it's a long process that takes a lot of hard work, and it's doable.
And it's proven by the fact that there's millions of people that are doing it. So it's achievable. It's not necessarily, I mean, it's not easy, but nothing is, you know, you want to make it as a carpenter, it's hard to you got to learn a lot of skills. And you still need to get out there and You're always working for other people and you've got to understand what that means.
Having this particular, like Jeff, you were talking earlier about training people at the Guitar Center. They're your clients, right? You're still working for them, but you've got to be able to make them understand certain things and make them feel comfortable about it. They're relying on you for your expertise, but you also, at the end of the day, have to make sure that they're satisfied.
And I know this is not you because you're not that type of person, but that kind of arrogance of ownership of information. It doesn't help your career. The advice is really kind of think about what it is that you want to do with this and how you want to contribute and then be really understanding of what it takes to do that.
That's, that's really significant. What you said, it's a, you know, your gift can get you in the room, but your character keeps you in the room and I've learned that as an engineer, you can have the technical, you can be technically sound, but not be able to translate to the person because of your people skills.
And you can really turn that person or those people off. No matter how talented you are, I've seen guys that clients refuse to work with because their attitude, they don't have a good spirit. They don't have a good, they don't, they don't have a good perceived, like they don't care about the artists. They just see a dollar sign.
It's a real skillset when you are interacting with clients, when it comes to engineering. Um, and that is actually, I tell guys all the time, man, I, you know, your attitude is 70 percent of the success of a session or the success of a project. I think that also goes to just the engineering in general, because if you don't click with your client or with the, with the, uh, with the performer, you're not going to be able to translate what's in their head.
The. To what everyone else hears. Absolutely. And that, that's why I thought it was prolific. What you said. I mean, you, you're teaching them that aspect of doctors get to be bitch, etiquette, etiquette, and that's so vital. That is the real teaching. I've seen guys come from Full Sail and it's just like, okay.
And it's a gray area or they detached from that, that aspect of the importance of that. And I just. That really kind of, you know, and really lit me up when you said that. And that's, that's amazing. I tell my students, some parents don't even teach their kids. I tell my students that doctors get to be dicks, but audio engineers cannot.
I know plenty of those doctors. Yeah, I do too. I used to work at the Capitol Hill art center in Seattle, and a lot of the bands would tell the owner that, uh, they wanted to come back and play just because the sound guy wasn't an ass. Yeah. Which would be, and, and you kind of just have to, and I still still am that way today is that I'm here to serve you.
I'm not here for me. And as long as, and you can go into a church, you can go into any situation like that. And then you're automatically, none of us are successful if. The people that surround us aren't successful. And to me, it's really important that everybody that I surround myself with, or if they're not being successful, how can I help you get there?
Those are all traits that you and all the instructors at the art institute have taught me. That is awesome. So awesome. Wow. As you look into the future, what advancements or changes in audio engineering do you see the most? Do you think, uh, here's a twist to it. How do you think AI is going to get into the mix of audio?
That's a good question. So, uh, kind of starting off with the first part of that, what advancements, I mean, AI, Let's put aside the whole immersive thing because, you know, we've come and gone with immersive formats over the years and people are super excited about current immersive formats and that'll last for another four or five years and then we'll move on.
Uh, AI though, I do think is a major thing. I've gone to a couple of different panels about AI. In fact, I'm working on putting together a panel here in San Diego on the use of AI in music and audio. And I think ultimately it's going to fall back into the category of another tool set that we can use.
There is the, we can start off with the, oh, I'm going to lose my job because of AI. And, um, I saw one guy put it on the panel this way. He says, your job is not going to be taken away by AI. Your job is going to be taken away by people who know how to use AI, right? So, if you understand So the same conversations came out about MIDI in the early 80s, late 70s.
They said, this is fake, this is artificial, this isn't real, people aren't doing this, it's just being done for you. And now clearly MIDI has developed into an incredibly useful and integral tool into the way that a lot of people make music. Even video synchronization. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, and that kind of, of, um, uh, machine control and sequencing control and these sorts of things is an incredibly important part about so many different types of music.
And if you think about like. The, the lineage of this, yeah, you have a history of music relied specifically on guitars and keyboards and, um, or just not even keyboards, guitars and bass and drums and vocals, right? Uh, rock music and country music and things like that, that have stayed that real traditional sense.
And then what's bridged off of that is electronic music, which has its roots in like the 1920s and 30s avant garde, especially through the 40s and 50s and the incorporation of technology into the use of, uh, to, to making music. And that's split it off into a couple of different types of things. I mean, all of this music that uses technology, hip hop and industrial electronic.
BDM music and all this sort of stuff. And AI, I think is going to become that kind of thing where you will have the splinter off of types of music in which AI is a part of that process. And I think that that could be really engaging. I know in the world of post production, I'm already using AI tools to help me with things like noise reduction.
It's incredible what it will do. You guys may or may not be old enough for the old Tide commercials where a guy would walk into the laundromat and, okay, it was a little racist. They were always Chinese that ran the laundromat, right? But the guy would walk in, the man would be standing there and he would say, how'd you get my shirt so clean?
And he would be like ancient Chinese secret. And in the back, the woman's going, my husband, what an idiot. We use Tide and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So that's the secret. And. Yeah. And I, and I was doing that with my clients with, with, uh, early versions of isotope, it's like, how'd you get the noise reduction?
So clean. And it was like ancient Steven secret. One of my guys, uh, he does woodwork and he said, it's very simple what he's fixing, but he sells it with this trick and pony show, like it's this whole thing, like it's, he goes through this whole, I'm elaborate and I'm skilled out, I'm, I'm super skilled and just took a lot of, a lot of intelligence to fix this chair and he said, all I did was took a piece of wood and just.
Yeah. And it was, he said, but it was, I had to sell it and, and you're right, man. I mean, MIDI is besides, uh, the invention of audio recording, MIDI is possibly one of the most important creations in music history. It is integrated in every aspect of music in anything. Even DAWs now, the foundation of the build of DAWs.
A large part of it is the MIDI, the MIDI ramming, sequencing, and DAWs. Every aspect of, of music is vitally dependent on MIDI, every aspect of it. Yeah, and I think AI is gonna, you know, it's yet to be determined exactly how that's going to manifest itself. You know, people are having a lot of fun making weird images, and they're starting to experiment with having it replicate voices and actually write whole songs.
I was part of a Zoom discussion about, was it Synthesizer V is the name of this program, that will synthesize the human voice. Um, and the discussions amongst the people in there were, Some of them are like, yeah, I'd make a demo song and my voice sucks. And I wanted to kind of hear this with a vocalist. So you type in the lyrics and you fill out a bunch of parameters of what you'd like the vocalist to be, and then it generates the vocals for you and you can go in there and tweak it.
The last panel I went to on AI, this guy did an entire three minute film. There was like a, um, an AI film festival, 50 percent of your films supposed to be made using AI. This guy did the whole thing and they're short films. But he said that this was maybe more work than doing the film traditionally, because each, if you think about how a film is made, you set a scene, you set, like, a particular sequence, the dialogue, whatever's happening, you make that, and then you say cut, and then you edit that with a bunch of other scenes, but each scene is intricately thought out and planned out by the director.
And so when he did this film, he programmed AI, scene by scene by scene, to generate just as if he was shooting them, and would have to go back and reshoot, clarifying the parameters until he got the scene to look like what he wanted. And then he edited all these bits together. So it was an interesting tool.
That was used and it was an experiment on his part to kind of see what would happen if he could do this. But I think it lends towards this idea of how we can use AI as part of our creative process. Sure, it has the potential to take care of most of our mundane tasks. If I'm Working on a film and I have a dialogue line that's just got the consistent issue of a particular like resonant frequency or defect or something like that, I can easily and I mean, I'm already doing that with isotope stuff, but there's probably more developments of just using AI to deal with some of that kind of tedious, just Edit out all the pops, edit out all the breaths, you know, and just take care of that stuff.
I think where we're going now with technology and AI, it's learning the proper language of how to communicate with AI. I, I can approach a situation with no music theory at all. And if I can give ChatGBT, or I can give Suno, or I can give any of those AIs that can create this music from, from complete thin air, if I can communicate the right commands, it will literally create a hit song for me, out of thin blue air.
Yeah, they refer to it as prompts, how you prompt. Yeah, exactly. And it can be a lot of fun. Like we had this, um, one of our AES social meetings down here, and one of the members just did a quirky make a hip hop song about the next AES social mixer and gave it some prompts. It made this goofy ass, funny, short, little, but it was brilliant.
We all got a really good chuckle out of it. And, you know, we used it to promote our events and it was successful. Everybody came and they talked about it. That's awesome. I think the human element is something that you cannot replicate. The flaw is you can't hear this person breathe and they're just like, no soul in it.
And there's no expression. And so, you know, uh, there's just no soul. There's no feeling in it. It isn't like, oh my God, this just happened. I'm actually reading this. I can, uh, the AI just cannot replicate that soul. And that's an organic, organic approach to things. You look at the Marvel, these guys are in huge green screen places, and you can tell it just looks so sterile.
A lot of it looks sterile. They try to work really hard to make it look organic. And when you see the behind the scenes, they're in this big green screen warehouse and it is, yeah, you can tell it's not organic. It isn't real. With a bunch of human eyes, like, and that's, that goes, that's across the board with anything, when it comes to AI or any, any music or anything.
Yeah. Hey, Steve, if you could make one lasting impact on an audio world or society as a whole through your work, what would that be? What would my lasting impact on the audio world be? I mean, I think it goes to everything I've been saying, you know, if I can get across this idea of you know, self empowerment and self motivation And the ability that we, while we don't always have control over every element of our life, that as much as possible, we assume, uh, responsibility is one of the biggest things for ourselves and for our lives, regardless of whether you're making music or driving a truck or operating on a brain or whatever.
I just made that up. But that, you know, I think people just need to be aware that what I used to tell the class, uh, tell orientation life, remember Jeff, is that I would say something along the lines of the rest of your life is your fault. And now granted circumstances. always present themselves in our lives and it's always a challenge to work through those around those with those to still be productive capable people you know it's not very difficult to let any of these these things become the reason why we don't succeed and too many people i think just go oh well i guess i can't do this now because of x and x can be as simple as I don't want to take the bus down to school or can be as eventful as I just lost half my family in a car crash.
You know, I mean, there's lots of different types of things that happen in our world and it's a matter of how we manage those things and continue to be a part of this world. That's a tough one to answer, but I guess if I could just, if that's what people walk away from with my classes, I think the ability to actually, let's use as a metaphor, the ability to work a mixing board is secondary to a sense of self responsibility and self awareness and their, their recognition of their own responsibility and how they go about their lives.
If they leave my classrooms and go, all right, it's up to me to do this, which includes learning. Teaching somebody how to use a mixing console is probably the easiest thing that I do. Teaching them the concepts that I just described and how to incorporate that into a life mission, that's, that's the impact I really want to have, is having them walk away going, I got this.
So, to me, it sounds like you've taught them, and what could be the biggest impact, is critical thinking. You've taught them how to look at a situation and say, alright, let's break it down. What step along the way did we mess up on? And go back and think it through. And then fix it. And that, to me, is what I think is lacking in a lot of educational systems today.
I don't see that with my kids, and I'm doing more of the critical thinking. Critical thinking teaching to my kids. All right. Why is it like this? What happened? One of my guys that I work with, he's taught his kids. What's the 25th letter of the alphabet? Why? That is a great question to ask to further your own information and knowledge of how things work.
So I, it sounds to me more like critical thinking is, is something that you're leaving behind as like a legacy of yours. And I think that's a great thing to have. I'm just going to say, Travis, I think you got it right there. I think it is about this notion of critical thinking. And then that goes all the way back to teach people how to take care of themselves, right?
Being able to understand how to interpret information and then what to do with it. The specifics of what that information is, I think that that's, that's the easier part. The step by step process of how to do a thing is fine, It needs to be taught and needs to be learned, but it's what to do with that thing and why you're doing that thing that is the real consequence, you know?
All of this is just an example of how music makes America stronger. I, I think, uh, sound engineers make America stronger. What they would do without us, I don't know. Steve, it's been really a joy. Like I said earlier, I could sit here and we have a lot more to talk about, like what we did for the last 20 years.
Just thanks again for your time and all that you've contributed to the music industry, the audio industry. And all the students that you've affected. I, I know you're gonna get mushy here, and I've told Steve many times that I wouldn't be where I am today without this man right here and everybody that supported him at the college I was at.
Well, I appreciate that. You know, and, and it's nice to be told these things about by impact on people, but without the people, I wouldn't mean anything. Jeff, you give me meaning. By your existence and your continuation of doing these things and what's most important is, um, not acknowledging my role, but acknowledging Jeff's role in his decision and dedication to take this seriously and to, and to work on it and to pay attention and to do what he's doing.
And that's what's going to make people successful. I can talk my butt off all day long in front of a classroom full of people, but if the people don't take advantage of that, I mean, I still feel very strongly about that idea. It's, it's the students. The ones that get out there and make it, it's Jeff, it's you, you know?
Yeah, I pointed you in a direction, and I opened up a book for you, and I may have even opened up your mind to a few ideas, but ultimately, man, it can only ever be you. Take care. Thanks again, everybody. Hey, uh, everybody, thanks for listening. This, I hope it encourages you just to go out and have a conversation about something.
Something, maybe it's critical thinking, maybe it's audio, maybe, maybe you want to create something and you need help with that creation, reach out to your local audio engineer. We'd like to thank you for listening to the podcast and buddy. Peace out.
