William Garrett - From Sweeping Floors to 10 Billion Streams - Music Production Podcast #397

William Garrett is a mixing and recording engineer and producer, and studio builder and manager. He managed a studio for Sony in New York City for 15 years and was Senior Music Producer for Spotify Singles, recording and mixing more than 900 tracks that have over 10 billion streams to date. William has worked with countless artists like Jack White, Miley Cyrus, Shania Twain, John Cale, Cyndi Lauper, The National, Norah Jones, Elton John… the list goes on and on… it might have been easier to mention who he hasn’t worked with!

William shared his story from humble beginnings sweeping the floor of a studio to working with some of the greatest artists of all time. 

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

  • William started his career sweeping floors in a recording studio.

  • He learned valuable lessons from observing recording sessions with Aerosmith and Carly Simon.

  • Sight lines in the studio are crucial for band communication.

  • The Boston music scene provided a rich environment for growth.

  • Transitioning to New York was a significant step in his career.

  • Building relationships in the industry is key to success.

  • Every session is a learning experience, regardless of the artist. Recording technology has evolved significantly over the years.

  • Creative limitations can enhance the music-making process.

  • Time constraints often lead to more focused and energetic recordings.

  • The spirit of spontaneity can lead to unique musical moments.

  • Mixing is an art that requires both skill and intuition.

  • Experimentation is key to discovering new sounds.

  • Reading the room is crucial for producers to facilitate creativity.

  • The vibe in the studio can significantly impact the outcome of a session.

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:00.873)

Welcome aboard, William. Thanks for being here.

William Garrett (00:03.276)

Hey man, Brian, thank you so much for having me. really appreciate it. This is fun.

Brian Funk (00:07.167)

Yeah, it's a pleasure for me because you are coming from such a huge world. mean, so much amazing stuff. I've been watching your studio walkthroughs and the places you work. The people you worked with is unbelievable. And I feel very lucky to get to talk to a guy like you about this stuff.

William Garrett (00:26.392)

Well, that's very sweet of you. And I feel lucky to have been in all those great situations as well. Because when you start out, you never know what's going to happen. so you just got to keep pushing and trying to get good things to happen for you. now it's been and continues to be a lot of fun. I'm recovering from a 15-hour session from the last couple of days. So it's still going, which is great. Which is great. It's great.

Brian Funk (00:31.453)

You

Brian Funk (00:47.677)

Okay.

Yeah.

I did catch you say in one of your interviews that you started off sweeping the floors in a recording studio.

William Garrett (01:00.716)

Very, very true. was a musician student at Berklee College of Music before they had the music production and engineering major. They just had one little eight track studio where we recorded our jingle projects. So a guy came by to give a lecture about owning a recording studio and he had just bought a recording studio on Newberry Street in Boston called Intermedia Sound, which was semi-famous. Aerosmith recorded Dream On there. Jonathan Edwards, who is a

Folk Star of the Day, he recorded some stuff there. And he just bought the place. And during his talk, he said, I got all my information on how to run a studio from a guy in New York named Howard Schwartz. Well, interestingly enough, I'd just been in New York on a high school project and we were right across the hall from Howard Schwartz recording. So I'd gotten to know Howard and his team. So that gave me an in with this guy. So when he finished his lecture, I went up and just said, hey,

I know Howard, you know, I helped him move his console in when I was down there doing the school project. And, um, and I said, you know, if you ever need anything, I didn't really know at that moment that I'd been a musician and sort of thought rock star was my future. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I know that the project I've done in New York was building a small recording studio and office space. And, um, so I knew that was interesting. And I said, you know, if you need anything, he said, yeah, send me a letter.

And I'll, and I'll do it. I've sent a letter and he gave me the job as janitor because he just bought the place and had nobody to literally sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms. So that was my, my first gig in the studio. And, know, through that got to witness a bunch of incredible sessions and then sort of started learning and then jumped off maybe two years later and just became an independent producer engineer. So it was, it was a, it was a good start and you know,

Luckily, I didn't have to go to a thousand studios knocking a thousand doors. just is one circumstantial serendipitous meeting that led me into this career.

Brian Funk (03:06.794)

And the fact that I guess you're just out of high school at that point to approach the guy and say hello, you know, we have some sort of connection. I think it's an important move.

William Garrett (03:16.748)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, and, and I guess, I guess in retrospect, I guess I felt okay just leaping up. think I thought that the connection between my high school project in New York and then as a Berkeley student, having, being connected to that studio in New York through Howard Schwartz was such a, I'm Southern. So whenever you get a thing like that, you go, Hey man, you know, I know about this and that, you know, everybody's always yakking about connections and knowing people.

Brian Funk (03:43.594)

Mm-hmm.

William Garrett (03:44.526)

So that's kind of what I did. And then just casually said, if you need anything, let me know. And then, you know, before I knew it, was sweeping floors, making tape copies, doing the overnight sessions that nobody else wanted to do. And I learned how to do it.

Brian Funk (03:48.862)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (03:56.971)

Yeah, just piecing it together one step at a time.

William Garrett (04:00.404)

Exactly. was really, it was exciting. It exciting time.

Brian Funk (04:03.976)

Yeah, well, mean, Dream On by Aerosmith. I just to be in that environment that's got to have some kind of spirit to it or like kind of historical memory. think that's...

William Garrett (04:17.006)

Well, what was really cool is when I was there, Aerosmith, I don't know if I've got my history exactly correct or not, but they'd done a couple of records with Jack Douglas producing, and then they'd taken a break and worked with somebody else. And they were about to go back in the studio and make an album, and they decided to do two or three songs with Jack again, but since they all lived in Boston, they did it at Intermedia. So while I was there, they came back and recorded a bunch of tracks. And it was cool for me because they sort of had the highest

technology of the day. know, they had, they had guitar racks, know, with MXR, phase shifters in them and stuff that at that point was, you know, the newest thing. People didn't, people just had a guitar amp and maybe a couple of foot pedals, but you didn't have a rack. so stuff like that. It was very cool to be there. So, you know, I was the runner and low man on the totem pole for that. So that was pretty cool to see that. And I did a session, was around for a session. didn't say did a session with Carly Simon and Bert Bachrach.

Brian Funk (05:00.33)

you

William Garrett (05:17.08)

So I got to see some, for Boston, you didn't usually get that many heavy sessions. So I was very lucky to have those couple of experiences and kind of see how that works.

Brian Funk (05:27.56)

Yeah, well those are some legends right there. Do you pick up on anything observing them, how they work or how they approach their work?

William Garrett (05:37.281)

I remember the things that I learned from those two different sessions was that Aerosmith wanted to all play together, but the studio didn't have enough ISO. So they actually ran speaker cables like down to the basement and all this kind of stuff. I'd never seen anybody separate, you know, put amps like in a hallway or in a bathroom or something like that. And Steven actually sang in the control room, you know, sort of placed under the speaker so it wouldn't feed back, but with the speakers like blaring. And then on the Carly session,

with Bert Bachrach. He was doing an album of all prominent women singers at this time. And he'd asked Carly to be on one track and they'd recorded the basics with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. And we had a 16 track MM-1000. I don't know if you've ever seen that Ampex machine, but it's huge. It makes the two inch tape reels look really small. And it's got eight, you know, double rack size amps on top and eight on the bottom.

and you have to manually switch from input to repro. So there's gotta be somebody basically operating that machine. So Bert brought an engineer with him, which I should look at the record. wish I knew who it was. the first, he brought an Adache case filled with microphones. And I'd never seen like anybody bring their own mics. Like this is what I wanna use in the vocal. This is what I wanna use, blah, blah. And then he brought a tape op with him. This woman whose name I also wish I still knew. And she had the 16 track tapes.

and

Brian Funk (07:25.406)

Look for the mark.

Brian Funk (07:32.746)

Hmm.

William Garrett (07:34.392)

Those were things that I'd never seen. You know, I was usually just like putting everybody in the same room, baffling as much as you can, but separating things like Aerosmith did. then bringing your own microphones, your own tape up to another studio was super cool. So those are really enlightening sessions.

Brian Funk (07:48.831)

Hmm.

Yeah, and I guess like a band like Aerosmith who's a band, you know, they're performing and they're trying to capture that. It's so important to have them playing. And I know you mentioned this in some of these videos too, the importance of the band being able to see each other and communicate visually.

William Garrett (08:06.154)

my, my, you know, learning over the years that, you know, sight lines are super important. And so they were, they were definitely, think Joe Perry and Steven were in the control room and I think maybe the bass player and Brad were out by the drums. And, but you know, as a, you know, 20 year old, 19 year old, whoever I was, who'd never really seen things on that level before it was super enlightening. And, know, I would steal every little thing I could and try it on my own sessions.

So that made it fun, that made it really fun.

Brian Funk (08:36.17)

you

Yeah, I would be too. I've found myself having that visual, even if you're not directly communicating like, okay, here comes the next part, just the little kind of, maybe it's a smile or just some head nodding or something. So you can just kind of feel the energy coming off of the other players.

William Garrett (09:01.804)

Yeah. And yeah, I feel that's important. think for a producer to be able to have eye contact with everybody from the control room is important because as you're nudging them one way or the other, you want to keep it positive. So when you're looking at somebody, it's hard for them to misconstrue maybe what you might say, because people can be super sensitive as they're playing. And, you know, I've been in the room with some producers who say, you you did that wrong. Now do it again. not very nice with how they approach.

the artist and they're not really thinking about their feelings. But I think that in the way I work, you want to make sure that you're keeping everybody comfortable. And I feel like you, get the best result if you don't get them upset about, you know, their own artistry and a lot of artists, you're very insecure. So you have to be, you know, very sure you're doing that. So sight lines really, really help with that.

Brian Funk (09:43.966)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:52.789)

There's so much vulnerability in the creative process and it can come from other people, could come from comments and it very often just comes from within.

William Garrett (10:03.468)

Yeah, exactly. And it only takes one wrongly placed comment to throw a session completely off track. And then it takes a long time to reel it back in. So people have to be very careful what they say. And so I've definitely learned that, learned that over the years. But the lucky thing, the lucky thing about this studio was the original studio that this guy bought was called Century Three and they did jingles and voiceovers. So was kind of a nine to five situation. So I ended up.

Brian Funk (10:10.985)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (10:16.308)

Right.

Yeah, I can imagine.

William Garrett (10:32.578)

getting bumped up from Janitor to make tape copies. And tape copies, in those days, when you did a radio spot, you sent it to the radio station on reel-to-reel tape. And then the radio station transferred it to a cart system, which looked like eight tracks, but are even bigger. And those are the things that DJs would slide in and they'd say, here's a word from our sponsor. And they'd punch the button and it would play the thing. So, you know, we had to make hundreds of copies in real time.

So that was my job. But then if anybody wanted to use the studio at night, they would say, well, William will do it. So I'd get these sort of cool hip hop sessions and all kinds of weird stuff overnight. And that was just being thrown into the deep end of the pool. I had no idea what I was doing. Very limited mic selection. MCI 400 series console.

I think 16 track machine. Yeah, we got a 24 track one later. And, but it also gave me the opportunity to experiment and, and bring in friends to record. Cause I would talk to my boss and say, if there's a night freak and I just come in and use the studio. So, so that turned into a situation where I could go to a local band and I could say, you know, I want to make a record. I started my own record label called Alpha Media Records, lofty name. And,

And then I would go to a band and say, you know, want to not really sign you to my label, but put a record out. if you pay for the pressing, I'll pay for the studio time. And what was great about that is I obviously wasn't paying for the studio time because my boss was saying, yeah, just go in and experiment with your friends. So I wasn't really quite telling the truth, but that's the way that I got to put my name on a record as a producer for the first time. so, you know, releasing basically

Brian Funk (12:25.502)

Hmm.

William Garrett (12:28.192)

your own material, you know, on your own label, releasing a record. So, so that was a great opportunity from there. And then some of the stuff that I did in the overnight sessions became the early days of rap, because it was in the late seventies and early eighties. So one, one group, two guys would come in and they would make tracks overnight and then drive them down to New Jersey to Sugar Hill. And then the Furious Five would wrap over and they could come out a week later. So there's all kinds of cool stuff like that. So that opportunity was.

Brian Funk (12:53.758)

Wow.

William Garrett (12:58.05)

was really great. So from janitor to that, huh? Yeah, it's true. That's true. was paying with my hard labor during the rest of time. Yeah. And, it was a small little studio, actually funny enough designed by John Storick. I've worked with a bunch of other studios since, it, it was there. then Intermedia was finally sold to the cars. the cars bought Intermedia sound.

Brian Funk (13:00.298)

Well, you were paying for the time. You were paying with each sweep, you know? Yeah.

Brian Funk (13:24.436)

Hmm.

William Garrett (13:26.764)

and had it redone again by John Stork. And they called it Synchro Sound. So when I went independent, Synchro was one of my home bases. So I'd work out of Synchro. And then not so many years later, one of the guys who had come over and done the overnight things that turned into rap, Michael Johnson, he had a big hit with a track called Pac Jam. The band was called the Johns and with a Z crew.

And he made enough money and he said, I'm going to buy Century 3. So he did buy Century 3 and he put in the first SSL in New England. So, although I was just talking to Rob Jasgo, who used to work at Blue Jay and Blue Jay Studios may have had the first SSL. I'm not really sure who did, but it was close. It was close. So, you know, we got to use that cutting edge technology and it was great. So, that connection from being the janitor didn't stop. went through a whole bunch of phases over many years, really until I left Boston.

I was working both at Century 3 had become Mission Control and Intermediate Sound had become Synchro Sound and owned by the cars. now where Intermediate was is a shoe store. just walked back the other day. So that's kind of a bummer.

Brian Funk (14:42.024)

Yeah, I hope they have a plaque somewhere at least. Okay, so you know got me with Aerosmith and now you got the cars too, another one of my favorites.

William Garrett (14:45.038)

Hopefully, somewhere, somewhere.

William Garrett (14:54.754)

Yeah, that was fun. were, Rick was wonderful and all those guys were great and they were sort of local boys done good. So they were really good for the Boston scene. I mean, the Boston music scene in the eighties was really incredible because, you know, compared to New York or LA, it's a small town, but there was an infrastructure for bands. So a band, were lots of venues to play live from super small ones to relatively large ones. And then there was a radio.

ecosystem that was led by WBCN, which was the big FM station, similar to WNEW in New York. And they would actually have a top three local countdown. think every Wednesdays they would intersperse local music with big artists. And then you have the college radio scene. You had Emerson radio, WERS, you had Boston college radio, you had all these BUs radio station, and they would feature and play local music.

Brian Funk (15:49.523)

Hmm.

William Garrett (15:50.959)

So I worked with a band, the greatest example is a band I work with, really great band called O Positive. And we made a, I guess an EP, it's probably seven or eight songs, so I guess an album. We made it at Synchro Sound and they got a lot of airplay and then they moved to bigger and bigger and bigger venues. So the first record we made on a super shoe string budget, and then when it came around to the second record, they had more budget to put in the record.

more time and, and you know, they built and then they got signed to a major label deal from that. And then of course, as we know, with lots of bands, that was, that's what ruined them is they went into the major label ecosystem and just, you know, put out a really great record and then nothing happened. But, but there was the support there for all kinds of different bands. You know, there's a band called Face to Face that I'm great friends with, and they kind of came up through that local ecosystem, Rubber Rodeo.

Brian Funk (16:31.241)

Hmm.

William Garrett (16:50.466)

All these really, really good bands. And there were other small record labels like Rick Hart had a label called Ace of Hearts. And he put out Mission of Burma and can't think of all the other bands, but he was the kind of guy I followed. I watched what he did with his 45s and his covers and everything and kind of borrowed from his great style. And he just, really did a good job and the records all sounded amazing. So yeah, there was a great world there. So I didn't.

I'm not, I'm from North Carolina, but I thought I didn't know if I'd stay how long I would end up in Boston, but the music scene was just so great. You know, till Tuesday was there. I need a list of great bands today cause I'm leaving a lot of people out, but they were just, and you you you had the rat in Kenmore square, which was basically CBGBs of Boston. So, you know, the police came there when they first toured America, all these bands came there and it was just this super grungy, funky club with a great sound system, just like CBs.

And so, we were basically there every night. Ryan, James Ryan's Hoodoo Barbecue is upstairs at the Hoodoo Barbecue. You got some punk band playing downstairs. There's no reason to ever go home. It was great. It was like every night. That was the problem. But we were young, so it was good. Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, we did. It was good. It was good. Yeah.

Brian Funk (17:55.742)

you

Yeah, that sounds like a perfect night.

Brian Funk (18:06.77)

Right? You can handle it when you're young.

It's so nice to have that kind of infrastructure as you put it to support bands and I'm pretty sure that's the story of the cars getting played on local radio and demos I believe as well just kind of get

William Garrett (18:26.476)

Yep. And I think in those days, their labels had a real eye on Boston. You know, obviously there was no social media. There was no way to see a band blow up except sort of be there and hear from the radio station or the local press. Like this is a band to come see, but, you know, bands like Treat-Her-Right thrive there. That band became Morphine, which is an amazing band. So all these really great bands and I got to, you know, be a part of a lot of those projects. So it was really a great learning experience and sort of.

Brian Funk (18:37.098)

Hmm.

William Garrett (18:56.94)

You know, I guess I felt eventually I needed to come to New York because that was kind of the end of the road. And being an East Coast guy, didn't really want to go all the way to LA. was too far away. It was way over there somewhere, way over there. And so yeah, so in the late eighties, I came to New York for better or for worse. was it was trial by fire.

Brian Funk (19:08.402)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (19:19.294)

Yeah, it was a different time in New York, I think, too. It wasn't cleaned up yet.

William Garrett (19:24.588)

Yeah.

It was very funky. lived on the Lower East Side and it was wild, but fun.

Brian Funk (19:31.851)

I was born in 1980 and growing up, up until about like I was a teenager, like it was just unheard of to go to New York. I'm on Long Island and it's like, you can't go in there. But then, you know, mid nineties came along and suddenly like it's okay, which was lucky for me. Cause that's right when I wanted to start going to see bands and yeah.

William Garrett (19:42.798)

Right.

William Garrett (19:55.854)

That's great.

Yeah, you know, I lived on the corner of attorney and Stanton street and it was a big heroin dealing corner. So you were always kind of safe because the dealers didn't want any trouble. And then if they weren't there, the police were there. So it kind of was, if you didn't mind stepping over people that had just shot up and were like rolling around the streets, but otherwise it was a, and it was super loud, but you know, I was four or five blocks from CBs and there was the pyramid club and King Tut's Wawa Hut and all these great places to go. it was a.

Brian Funk (20:08.391)

William Garrett (20:28.374)

It was a rocking time in New York City. but very, you know, I was coming from a place where I'd worked with so many of the local bands and knew a lot of local people to come here was a real transition. And I had sort of been working on it. I've been making trips to New York, networking, trying to, didn't have that word networking back then. I wonder what we called it back then, but it sounds funny saying it about that now. But the, and now exactly. It's so funny. I don't But the,

Brian Funk (20:51.114)

Yeah, sounds like you're in suits or something. Conferences.

William Garrett (20:58.446)

But you know, getting to know people at record labels, getting to know people at publishing companies, which publishing companies in those days had a much more active role in signing bands and trying to get them record deals and stuff like that. it was, it was, was quite the transition. And I had a great, I had a great first year, worked with a bunch of great bands, did a project with Rick Rubin, did some other stuff. And then it all just came like screeching. It was just like, oh, that was great.

Where are all the other gigs? And so sort of got in the back of the line with the other million people that came to New York to be engineers and producers and just started piece by piece, you know, building a career.

Brian Funk (21:39.147)

But that's a great lesson, think, for a lot of people. Be willing to start there and be hungry. I mean, you're staying after hours to record and you're getting to know the gear and you're... Sounds like you're also putting yourself in situations where you might be a little bit over your head, you know, or out of your depth a little, which is where a lot of growth tends to happen.

William Garrett (21:56.471)

Very much so. Exactly.

Yeah, if you don't get thrown out on your ear, it's a, you know, a lot of, a lot of growth happens. But, uh, uh, I remember one time I was doing a session with this guy. think his name was something Wagner. wrote all the Alice Cooper hits at like 18 and all those songs. And he was doing a demo and I, and I was walking in with, with two big two inch tape boxes. And there was a little step up in the studio and I tripped and dropped the boxes and there was just silence in the control room.

Brian Funk (22:18.072)

cool.

William Garrett (22:33.038)

And I looked up and that guy goes, oh man, ah. And I go, I go, what? And he goes, you probably knocked all the high end off the tape, man. I mean, you probably like, those are ruined. And I sort of was like, is this something maybe I didn't know about? Like you can do this? So he had me going for a minute, but he just reminded me of like feeling like I was about to get kicked out of the dirt, man. He just knocked all the high end off the tapes. I mean, it's a bummer. can't say that. I can't make that joke anymore.

Brian Funk (22:59.476)

Yeah.

William Garrett (23:02.158)

Unless somebody drops a hard drive, guess, but that really is probably a problem. yeah, probably, yeah, the other tape could be dropped a million times and it won't make any difference. It won't make any difference. But no, it was then and continues to be a learning experience, you know, every time I'm in the room, especially with all the different artists and stuff like that. But yes, know, soon enough, I sort of got, I clawed my way up, did a...

Brian Funk (23:06.218)

Yeah, the tape probably be better off. Yeah, that would be...

William Garrett (23:30.819)

Did Ascent as a live sound man at a club, which was not really my thing, but you know, and in those days they weren't as interchangeable as they are now. Now I see guys come into clubs and put in a memory stick and the whole board goes to their whole setup. I looked down from the balcony, I see them using the same plugins we use in the studio. And I'm like, this is not fair. Like when I did it, I didn't have any of that cool shit, man. It was all feedback and a mess and nobody could hear themselves and no in-ears, no nothing. But no, that was it. So yeah, just.

Brian Funk (23:44.266)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:49.065)

Alright.

Uh-huh.

William Garrett (23:59.449)

sort of any gig that would keep me alive and keep me in the business. So that was good. That was good.

Brian Funk (24:04.202)

Yeah, I think that's what it takes, I mean, that hunger and there's so many people into it. Right. Yeah.

William Garrett (24:12.878)

literal hunger, literal hunger for rent, for rent money. I need to pay my rent. I need to pay my rent. But, but yeah, so as that story continues, just through getting to know all these people, I was working with my friend, Patty DeVries, who worked at Sony music publishing, which became Sony ATV music publishing, the record behind me, the story I'll tell you. And

She, publishing companies in the nineties would sign bands or I'd say late eighties, early nineties. They would sign like rock bands that didn't have a record deal. And then they would actually pay for the band and make demos. And they would shop, the publisher would shop those to the labels. You know, that may still happen sometimes. I don't personally see it as much, but they would. So I produced this great band, the Hepburns.

And at Media Sound, which was an amazing place to work on 57th Street, now gone. And we would make a full-blown high-produced record, basically, that was demos and try to get these bands signed. So she had the idea to save money and for her to have more fun at her office job was to build a studio in the offices. So they hired me as a freelancer. And I put together a room for them and an old conference room.

And so it was really fun. would do guitars in the bathrooms at night for a reverb. We would do drums all over the office. We'd do all this stuff. Anyway, that, that basically turned into a 15 year gig of running a studio for Sony ATV as they moved from fifth Avenue to 550 Madison, the big Sony building. And I had two different rooms there and every time they would move to a different floor, I'd talk them into letting me improve it a little bit more like can.

we cannot bring in a friend to help this, know, can we curve the, you know, slant the walls, please. Can we do this? You know, and then in 2000 Pro Tools came along before we working on a Tascam 16 track tape that was connected to all kinds of mini gear. And, uh, but that became sort of a nice steady gig for me. And I still got to do other stuff. Like I was able to work with John Cale from the Velvet Underground on some film scores. did, um, American Psycho, the

William Garrett (26:36.544)

orchestral soundtrack for that. And I was able to stuff because I could sub somebody in for me when I wanted to do these other gigs. And that became a thing. And then it was just basically pre-production and songwriting all day, every day. So people would come in and work on new tracks and, you know, got to work with Mary J. Blige, Andrea Martin, who wrote a bunch of great songs, Chuckie Thompson, who, amazing producer. did...

I'm gonna forget one mic is the song, but in Nas, one mic, we did a lot of the work on it there. We did the original Norah Jones demos with Jesse Harris there. So that became a great jumping off point. And I was just starting to build a family and it was nice to have that stability that it turns out to be. And that lasted about 15 years until they decided to not have a studio anymore. And the reason I have the Beatles plaque, which is so cool.

Brian Funk (27:08.072)

Yeah, right.

William Garrett (27:34.735)

Cause he's got the Richard Avedon photos across the bottom. was for the singles, the first singles record they released was Richard Rowe, who's the president of Sony music publishing, just wonderful human, a great friend. But to this day, Sony music publishing did a joint venture with Michael Jackson to buy part of the Beatles catalog that Michael Jackson owned. And it was a huge deal. And, and you know, I think

Brian Funk (27:35.409)

it.

William Garrett (28:02.316)

You know, it was generating that catalog generates so much income that it was just like, you know, the day you signed the deal, you know, the bank account just started filling out. Everybody was very happy about that deal. And, but they paid millions of dollars for it. So I don't know how it balances out. Anyway, it was great for us because those were the days of CDs and our, our tape library was filled with Beatles CDs. So all our friends got amazing Christmas presents for like two years as we had all these CDs we could swipe and give to our friends.

Brian Funk (28:12.33)

Right.

William Garrett (28:32.076)

But, but Richard got this plaque and he had one for his outer office and then one for his office. And this one says to Sony ATV, the other one said to Richard Rowe. What's interesting about Richard Rowe and the Beatles is Richard's father is famous sadly for being the A &R man that turned down the Beatles. So, yeah, so the Beatles did demos, I think with Deca, I might be getting my history wrong, but, but.

Brian Funk (28:53.578)

yes, I've heard of him.

I think you're right. think it might be DECA.

William Garrett (29:01.934)

They went and his father, I think he was Richard too, Dick Rowe was like, no, no, I don't think we'll sign these guys. And of course, think too is great for a guy. That was the thing. So anyway, this was kind of neat for Richard as his son to have this connection with the Beatles to be part of it. And every time I'd go to hang out with Richard, I'd see this plaque and I go, man, that is like the coolest thing I've ever seen. So Richard left the company while I was still there, while the studio was still running. So one day he comes down the hall to my studio.

Brian Funk (29:18.602)

Hmm.

William Garrett (29:31.631)

And he's got the plaque. He puts it in the studio and he goes, I just wanted you to have this because I know you really liked it. And I was like, that's great. And he goes, just make sure it never leaves the building. Wink, wink like, know, sort of had me to officially tell me to not take it home. But of course, like soon as I could take it home, I took it home because I wasn't going to give up on that. So yeah, that's a pretty cool thing. But yeah, you know, fun times, you know, I'm trying to think who else came through those doors, Cyndi Lauper.

Brian Funk (29:43.242)

Ha ha ha ha.

Brian Funk (29:49.585)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

William Garrett (30:01.614)

bunch of other people. was just a, it was really sort of top end pre-production. And then when they killed that, um, I kind of had no idea what I was going to do. So I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, you know, I've sort of, I didn't pay for the gear, but I've personally decided what all the gear was going to be in the studio. You know, it wasn't much, but it was a Pro Tools rig or something like It was some microphones.

And I said, you know, these guys are just going to put it in a closet and not use it. find that totally upsetting. Somehow I felt connected to the gear. Just silly, but you know, we all get connected to our gear a little bit. And so I went to the, to Danny Strick, who was then the president of Sony Music Publishing and an old friend. said, Danny, I think you guys should just give me all that gear as part of my, part of my severance. And he thought, that's pretty good idea.

And he was great at helping me sort of make it look like it was worth a lot less than it was with people in the company who wouldn't know the difference. He was like, yeah, it's not worth very much. It's a bunch of junk. Just give William a good deal. He was very sweet about that. So that turned around like really quickly in like a week or two. They were like, yeah, What do you want us to do with it? And I was like, I don't know. So I had to go find a studio space. So I found a space on 23rd street and a bunch of studios and

Brian Funk (31:10.346)

Hmm.

William Garrett (31:27.982)

And just, they brought a truck down, loaded it in, and that's how ElectraCraft, my studio was born because I didn't really want to get in the studio business, but I didn't really know how to carry on what I was doing. And all the artists that I've been working with, you know, we're gonna need a place to go. And Sony was still willing to pay for the demos. They just didn't want the studio in an office building. So anyway, that's how that studio got started. I just moved all the gear in and myself and.

Another engineer, I'm going to forget his name. He has the right to kill me because we worked together for a minute, but it'll come to me. We put it together and started working again. So it was amazing. It was really amazing. for a couple of years that business came and then a lot of those artists would go to LA to write and they would say, Hey, William, don't know. They'd call me at like three o'clock in the morning and say, Hey, we can't find a place out here that we like. Can you open a place out here?

I kind of stupidly did it, became a money put in the end. What happened was is publishing companies stopped as recording technology became more home friendly. They stopped paying for demos in studios because they would give an artist in advance and just say, you know, buy some gear. You know, we're not going to run up your tally paying for studios that are more expensive.

Brian Funk (32:40.446)

Mm-hmm.

William Garrett (32:56.046)

Is that my devices making noise or your devices making noise? I'm hearing some alert. I'm hearing it, but hopefully it's not recording. Yeah. I don't know what I have all my alerts. Hopefully off. maybe cut that part out as Stephen Colbert always says. But, but yeah, so the publishing company started, so it didn't, it made the smaller studio that dealt in sort of high end pre-production. made that business model a little less viable. And so,

Brian Funk (32:56.211)

Yeah.

I'm not hearing it. So, not me.

Brian Funk (33:11.242)

you

Brian Funk (33:23.454)

Mm-hmm.

William Garrett (33:25.944)

So, and then came Spotify.

Brian Funk (33:30.238)

Yeah, the next chapter.

William Garrett (33:30.69)

So that was in the next chapter, yeah, that was a very lucky break on my part to be able to be involved in basically helping start Spotify singles and then that whole program for almost eight years, I got to do that. About 900 plus songs recorded with a myriad of amazing artists. it was really,

Brian Funk (33:48.074)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (33:57.343)

Yeah, saw it. Those singles have surpassed 10 billion streams, which is...

William Garrett (34:03.31)

Yeah, 10 billion streams. So funny. Brian Groen, who started the program and who gave me my opportunity there, he and our engineer, Jack Mason, I can't remember what level we got to, maybe half a billion streams or something. And they wanted to celebrate and they like pulled out a joint and said, know, and I was like, no, no, I don't smoke pot. hate pot.

And Brian was like, okay, look, I'll make you a bet. If it gets to a billion streams, you're going to smoke pop. I was like, sure, because I never, I never thought it would ever get to a billion stream. I was like, you're kidding? That's a billion. so anyway, say the least we, uh, I did have a, uh, a toker too, when we hit a billion streams and that's, don't know what I have to do at 10, 10 billion, but, uh, but it was fun. I made it.

Brian Funk (34:43.933)

never happen.

Brian Funk (34:57.066)

You

William Garrett (35:00.846)

I made it so we, made a unconditional that we go see the guitar exhibit at the Met Museum that was there and we would get high before that. And then I got to take them out to a red wine. I got to take them out to like a grownup dinner, like a steak, a French restaurant with steak and red wine to show the difference between the pot smokers and the grownups, you know? So that was really good. We had a good time.

Brian Funk (35:22.474)

Yeah, two different poles of existence right there. That was a great exhibit. I got to see that.

William Garrett (35:28.142)

Exactly, exactly. I know that was great. I don't remember it because I was stoned. So I need to go back. I need to go back.

Brian Funk (35:34.859)

It was awesome. Yeah, just, mean, everything it seemed like. It seemed like they had something from everybody. The Beatles drum kit was right there and all their gear and Van Halen's guitar. yeah, as a guitar player, you're just like, wow, I've seen these in magazines. Yeah.

William Garrett (35:45.774)

That was cool. I know, that was very cool.

William Garrett (35:54.445)

No, no, was it. Yeah, exactly. We all geeked out to all of those things. I know it was fun. It was fun.

Brian Funk (36:06.314)

crazy to make all that, there's a lot of stuff happening during these periods. And I think maybe just worth mentioning, I'm sure a lot of people are aware of this, but there might be some people that aren't, that like studio time was hard to come by back in, not even that long ago.

where I can remember I had a four track cassette recorder and that was amazing technology that sounded really terrible by today's standards, especially with our know how at the time. But to actually get into a place to record like that was really a special experience and I guess really that only the top people got to do that. Just.

William Garrett (36:54.35)

Well, only the top people got to spend time. In my Boston days, there was different levels of studios from budget to the best. And it was back in the day when bands would save up and book two days. And then there was tape. Tape was really the big thing because a reel of two inch tape in those days was 150 bucks, which that's only two martinis in New York now, but it was a lot of money.

Still has a lot of money, really. And you know, if you ran it at 30 inches per second, you only got 15 minutes. If you ran it at 15 inches per second, you got a half an hour, but you got more noise. So people had to make decisions like that. So, you know, we would sit and do multiple takes and have to decide to erase the previous take. And if you know, if you had a big budget, you could record multiple reels of tape and then you could edit with a razor blade between the different takes on the two inch tapes, which I've done on bigger, more expensive projects.

and put together the perfect takes. But if you're just, you know, that band from Connecticut who saved up and drove up for the weekend to record like six songs, you had to make big time decisions. the studios, know, studios made a good profit on tape. So they would say, just buy another reel of tape, you know. So, but yeah, it's so interesting now in a that those decisions are all out of the process. And, you know, those limitations are kind of

over, can do like eight gazillion takes and then, and you know, time is really your only constraint. But if you're, know, in somebody's house with Pro Tools, you know, you can do like 400 takes and who knows, maybe that 400 take is the one, but maybe the third one was the one too. So you never really know, but I can't, I sort of shiver at the thought of having to erase a take. We used to do it all the time and

Let's say you got the first take and you needed a song a second, I mean, you just had to go back to the first song. You'd have to make sure it fit in that space on the tape or you recording in the next one.

Brian Funk (39:05.022)

Right,

William Garrett (39:05.326)

So you had to like mark the tape if you didn't want to cut it and put leader in, you know, I mean, you know, it was wow. It was, it was wow. And, um, but yeah, I mean, I was very lucky to be working on a level and even in Boston, um, I got a, you know, a very nice, uh, everybody to think so, but, know, it sort of as a mixer. So sometimes groups would record their album somewhere where it was inexpensive and they could work on it longer. And then they'd come to me and they'd say, you know,

Brian Funk (39:10.505)

Yeah.

William Garrett (39:34.297)

Can you mix these two songs? So we go to Blue Jay out in the country or go to Mish Control or Synchro Sound and mix those songs. And, and that was a lot of fun. And I felt super honored that they would come to me and ask me to do that stuff. But then as the technology got better, you know, like, like, my old friend, Mark Sandman, who was, who was morphine part of morphine and, his band with Billy Conway and Dana Colley, they, you know,

He had a loft full of recording gear and would just basically make a lot of the records there. then Paul Coldry is an incredible mixer. He would mix the stuff and some other people. just, know, so that it definitely shifted.

And you know, I don't even know how many studios there are in Boston anymore. I just went to a great one called Q division. I'll give Q division a plug. Great studio. Anybody's in Boston. I helped them put together the first one and this is like the third one, I think. And it's a beautiful studio and wonderful people.

Brian Funk (40:38.516)

Do you ever find sometimes those limitations were helpful? For instance, I've got a Tascam 388 right next to me here, the eight track on a quarter inch reel. yeah, I've got all the, of course, computerized stuff, DAWs and all, but sometimes when I'm working on that thing.

William Garrett (40:49.579)

There you go.

Brian Funk (41:05.002)

I feel like the creative juices a little more or something and there's these decisions. I'm not cutting tape. Like I'm not even going to go there. I've never done it and I'll just, I'll try again, you know, but they are difficult decisions if you're deciding to punch in or going to do another take, but I think you wind up moving forward more.

William Garrett (41:15.329)

It's fun.

Right, right,

Brian Funk (41:30.406)

sometimes because you say, okay, that's or that one has the energy and I'm gonna, I don't want to lose that. let's stick with it. I wonder if you find that these days, sometimes the infinite options and the undues and the infinite tracks and maybe the neck, you said the 400th take.

William Garrett (41:52.579)

Might be the best one. But I think it's funny that you mentioned the word limitations, because I work with John Baptiste a lot. John and I have this running joke. He always wants more limitations. Like he says, you know, if we're recording two tracks, he says, can we just record on eight of the tracks? And I'm like, no, because we're recording like 20 pieces. I'm not going to do that. And we laugh back and forth. And so I think now if you want limitations, you have to create them yourself.

But what I think has been my experience with limitations is the greatest limitation is time. So if you look at, you know, the bands didn't have big budgets. used to record in the early days. There was a time thing. You only had so many hours. couldn't be infinite. and then you go fast forward to the Spotify singles situation. We had one day with each artist. That was just part of the program. And we were recording two songs. The A side was a

reconfigured version of one of the artist's original tracks and the B side was a cover. So we had to do all that in one day. And that was great because you have a lot of these huge artists that have spent months and months and years making a record. They just got to come in and knock it out one day. So you get to work, working into that time parameter, but also with a million different ways to make a record.

Like one band comes in and they're on tour and they just, you know, we're all set up when they get there. We've got everything rolling. They basically go to their station, boom, boom, thump. Yep. That works great. Let's do it. You know, think Wilco was in the studio for like, you know, 45 minutes or something. I mean, they just came in and played each song twice. And then, I can't think of the lead singer's name. thank you very much. I'll get in trouble for that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Jeff, Jeff, lean the microphone.

Brian Funk (43:43.626)

Jeff Tweedy. I love Orko.

William Garrett (43:49.967)

and said, we could do that better, but we won't. And that was it. So, and it was great. The songs came out beautifully. And then you have other artists that are used to putting a song together piece by piece, know, overdubbing a lot of stuff, having a track, doing tons of vocals, all that. But we still have to figure, we still have to work that into that same time configuration, you know. Arcade Fire came in with 27 people squeezing to the tiny room on 18th street where we were recording.

Yeah, all woman, youth choir, string quartet, 11 piece band. Some people wanted wedge monitors, some people wanted headphone monitors. It was an insane session that we had one day. I mean, we set it up starting the day before, but still, but that was our thing. They were like leaving at eight o'clock. that's, some bands would come in and come off doing a morning TV show.

Brian Funk (44:28.148)

Wow.

William Garrett (44:46.766)

play with us and then go to soundcheck and play a gig somewhere that night. the time was really the great equalizer and everybody really rose to the occasion. Like they knew it and they prepared for it. everybody was, all the artists, whether super big or not so big, were just on such a professional level that it was just a pleasure. And it was part of my job as the senior producer for all the music was to

facilitate how we can make that happen in a day and, sort of keep the ball rolling, you know, all day long. Of course, never rush anybody. Of course. And we did a lot of, you know, 16 hour sessions, but, uh, but you know, a lot of time we'd knock it out quick, but you have all these amazing people, know, like Brandy Carlisle and this and that, you know, can't list is so long and they just, that was their constraint. So no 400 takes like.

Brian Funk (45:42.686)

Yeah, no time.

William Garrett (45:43.791)

And that was nice because it gave the artists to a different perspective on what this, you know, music, what this product was because they didn't have to invest like a year of their lives making a record. It wasn't like, I'm making mine. My first record was a hit, now I'm making my second record and it's all, you you're falling a lot of anxiety. This is more fun. And I think it's reflected in the vibe of the recordings. People are just sort of doing it. And,

And I don't think there was as much riding on it for them as maybe something else. So the songs have a lot of spirit. have a lot of experimentation. And it was so much fun for me as a producer to help them facilitate that. Like, let's drag this thing out and play it backwards through something. We were just, everybody was in a very creative mood during those sessions and ready to have a great time. that was.

That was a great learning experience for me in how to do that so quickly. it was great because there was no time for anything to go horribly wrong either. There's no time for people to say they didn't like each other. No time for two of the band members to get into a fist fight. There was no time for that. They just had to get done. And we did have some people take naps in booths and some people wander off. But in general, was all...

Brian Funk (46:56.222)

Yeah. We'll do that later.

William Garrett (47:09.39)

And, you know, people always ask me like, were there any bad sessions? And there, there weren't really, because everybody was in this sort of, yeah, we got 10 hours. We're in a great place where we're got great players. have great instruments. Um, you know, let's make something really cool, really quick. So, so I think in terms of limitations, back to your original question, I think time is really a great limitation to have because, uh, you know, I think if you only have a day.

to make two records and you want them to sound good, you know, got to step up. And like, luckily you're dealing with, you know, all these amazing people. So that helped. That helped that you had insane, talented artists, you know, they were so pro and so good on every level. you know, really energetic about making, you know, 99.9 % of them were super energetic about making something interesting.

Brian Funk (47:51.656)

Yeah, the talent's there. Right.

William Garrett (48:09.154)

Which is great for a producer, because then you're like, okay, you have that positive outlook on it. Let's try this, let's try this. know, we got to experiment a lot, do some fun stuff. So yeah, some of those recordings are ridiculously good, due to the people and the energy involved.

Brian Funk (48:21.695)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (48:29.46)

Yeah, you know, there's some kind of weird paradox that happens in a huge time crunch where for me at least, since it's such a pressurized thing, we only have this much time, it kind of relieves the pressure because we only have this much time. Like we're going to do the best we can, but we only have this much time. And I love that, that like high stakes, but in a way the

because the stakes are so high, you're kind of like forgiven for it.

William Garrett (49:04.792)

Well, and I think if the more you have experience working with artists in that kind of timeframe, the better I got at helping them, you know, get through it without any intention or like, my God, we're never going to finish this, you know, just help, help kind of push it along. And, but yeah, we were usually able to knock it out. And then I would usually in the time we were really putting out the rec more and more of the Spotify singles, I would mix in like a day or two and then have this amazing dialogue with the artists.

about the mixes and then there was a deadline as to when we had to finish the mixes. mean, for mixing, thank God there are deadlines. was just talking to an engineer and I said, mixes are never finished and he said, yeah, only abandoned. And I thought that was brilliant. It's like we're never really finished because there's always one little thing you could do that you might want to change.

Brian Funk (49:43.71)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:52.03)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (50:00.287)

Yeah.

William Garrett (50:01.688)

Thank God for Mastering Engineers. make us look good.

Brian Funk (50:05.034)

Yeah, there's, there's especially now, right? Like I can remember mixing my old stuff on a, you know, an actual board, just like a task and board. had a eight ads at the time from eBay and the mix was a performance, you know, like the automation was that you had to do that by hand. And I would have notebooks with all my little moves on what I thought I should be doing.

But at the end of it, it was kind of the best I could do in that pass. It was like playing an instrument. was like, yeah, it's not perfect, but it's a pretty good take. And you went with it.

William Garrett (50:45.56)

Yeah, I was just explaining pre-automation to a friend the other day and remembering putting little strips of tape next to the fader with different marks for different, this is where the bridge mark is, having to have your own little notation of how you knew. And then a lot of times you'd get to a certain point and you'd get the band on the console with you and everybody would have a job. And then you roll the half inch two track and try to.

print a good mix and you know then somebody would screw it up and then we'd all laugh you know it became a really fun thing to do with the band and then you know maybe some mix where somebody overshot something like they overshot how loud the solo was or something that's okay and then you could cut tape between the mixes so you could that's what we started doing pre- automation you know if you got if the mix six was really great the bridge was great but everything else sucked you could cut that in to the other mixes that were good

But that was fun. Now we all just sit around like on an airplane with our laptops and draw things.

Brian Funk (51:50.634)

Could be doing email, could be making spreadsheets, could be producing hit records.

William Garrett (51:56.079)

That's right. He'll be producing hit records. Exactly. It's a whole different ballgame. But those were fun times. at Synchro, they put in a MCI 600 series that had the type of automation where it put some kind of a weird signal that recorded on a track. So every time you did an automation patch, you had to bounce from one track to the other. So on the 24 track, you can only use 22 tracks for recording. The other two are for automation. And then the more you did it, the more out of sync it got.

So if you did more and more patches, all of sudden, the great ride you did on something seven passes ago was late or something. It was kind of a disaster. That whole thing. And then, then finally SSL came out with an automation. Didn't nobody, didn't invent any moving faders yet, but they had this weird little cheesy graph that had these green sticks that would show you where each fader was. So then you can visualize the previous moves you had done on top of those moves. But, but it definitely.

Brian Funk (52:31.21)

Wow.

William Garrett (52:53.75)

All of sudden then people were like, I'm going to work on the bridge for like five hours. It's like, jeez. So it got kind of crazy then, you know? And you know, now it's crazy crazy because you can really manipulate pretty much anything.

Brian Funk (52:58.002)

Ha ha ha.

Brian Funk (53:02.708)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (53:09.854)

Yeah, like you said, the time thing is important because I think a lot about my time, almost like a budget with money. It's like, if I've only got two hours, I don't have 45 minutes to get the compression on the kick drum right. Or some minor detail. It gives you a...

William Garrett (53:31.599)

Well, I'm sure on your level, you've got all that dialed in going in, but still it does, it makes you make a decision. It's like, if this has got to be done by three o'clock, then I can't keep doing this or keep doing that. It's like, okay, this is good. And it's hard. It's hard to make that decision to let it go. But I got a lot of confidence because when I'll do these mixes for the Spotify singles tracks,

I only had known these artists for a day and that was great, but these are like giant artists. So I remember, I remember guy I worked with, I did War on Drugs, that band. And my coworker, Brian was like, these guys are gonna, know, the mixes are gonna, it's gonna be hard because it took them a year to make their record. So I do my mixes and I think they're good and I'm thinking, well, I've got to send them in because we got a time crunch. Send them in, they get approved first pass.

Brian Funk (54:10.282)

Cool.

William Garrett (54:27.192)

They just come, they just email back and go, those are great. Thank you. I'm like, what? And, know, he was amazed. And, so, you know, so over time that gave me more confidence to at least, because really, you know, either they're going to love them or they're going to ask you to revise them. So you got to stop sometime and send the mix in and there's nothing wrong with being asked to revise a mix. You know, that's, that's, and especially when they're revisions, mean,

Brian Funk (54:45.986)

yeah.

William Garrett (54:55.958)

I was so nervous when I first started doing that series. I was working in the studio, I'd never worked in before, doing all this stuff. I was mixing super quickly and I thought, you know, I'm gonna get these notes that say, why does it sound like it's got a blanket over it or where's the bass? And the notes I would get would be like, can you turn the vocal up a little bit in the second verse? And you know, I don't really like that delay you put on toward the end, so could you take that off? And I was like, at least I've got like the high end, mid and low, you know, at least the mix sounds like a mix to me.

Brian Funk (55:10.1)

Hmm.

William Garrett (55:25.792)

And so that was like, And you know, that's after many years of experience. still like, mean, I mixing is a dark art. I've got so many friends, know, like Tony Maserati and Ed Stasiam and Bradley who just did all that most stuff for Billy Joel. They're such incredible mixers and I just don't know how they do it. It's just the stuff is so good. And you know, they're real pros.

Brian Funk (55:29.087)

Right.

William Garrett (55:52.813)

I still think it's dark art because it gets listened to in a million different things. I guess it gets listened to on earbuds now, more than anything.

Brian Funk (55:59.921)

Yeah, yeah, it's all the different ways it comes out of different speakers and then, and so much of it is like an artistic choice too. If you're, you know, deciding I'm going to mix.

William Garrett (56:05.857)

Right.

Brian Funk (56:15.946)

I'm playing a three-piece rock band and we'll say, we want it to sound like these recordings or those recordings. And then I'll listen closely. I'm like, well, the vocal is way up front here and it's buried on this one. What do we want? The kick drum, can't even hear it. This one is the most forefront sound in the whole thing. And they all sound great.

William Garrett (56:35.662)

Very true, very true. I they all sound great. I mean, that's the thing, it's so objective. So objective, it's mostly the artists and the song and the energy that's coming through the recording that makes a difference. I've heard recordings where the tambourine was so loud, but you only really noticed on examination when you were listening to it in your car, you're happy as a clam. So it's really interesting. And I think that it's fun to analyze those records, but there's so much more to them.

Brian Funk (56:58.388)

Yeah.

William Garrett (57:05.526)

then it being the way they sound and the way they're mixed or just playing a role in the overall experience. Because the song and the artists play such a role in, in, and you know, how those songs make you feel, which is nice for us to be in the part of the process that translates, you know, through the artist and the song to a listenable medium that can then go everywhere. That's such an exciting process and, you know, trying to capture that emotion.

and that sound the best you can is really great. So many people have worked so hard at figuring out really cool ways to do it. I'm always amazed at the technology that we get to use and the quality of a lot of it. The microphones and mic pres and all that kind of stuff that are around from old days and still being made. You know, there's just some beautiful stuff out there that makes your job really easy.

Brian Funk (57:52.308)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (57:55.69)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (58:01.064)

I can remember the jump from four track cassette to the ADATs. And my attitude was, I think at first I knew nothing about what I was doing really. So I'd learned, well, wow, if I move this mic a little bit, changes the tone incredibly. So there was probably a couple of weeks where I got a little obsessed about where I was putting my microphones, but then I was like, you know what? This sounds so much better than anything I could have done on that four track.

I'm just not even going to worry about it. I'm just going to make my songs and record them. Cause even if I screw it up completely, it's still going to sound so much better. Just the new fidelity and things nowadays are so much more in that direction that I mean, of course I'm not advocating like, don't worry about this stuff, but you can do it with, you can get, start out at a really high,

William Garrett (58:35.682)

That's great.

William Garrett (58:42.344)

Yeah, because you have this new way of recording it.

Brian Funk (59:01.084)

level of fidelity with having no idea what you're doing.

William Garrett (59:04.664)

Well, you reminded me of a conversation I had with Jimmy Douglas when I was at NAMM and somebody had asked Jimmy in an interview, what did he think the current state of mixing was? And I thought, how do you answer that question? Like, I don't really know how to answer it. He was like, I'll tell you how to answer it. Yeah, right, exactly, that's good, that's good. We'll see you on the stage in Vegas, that was a good joke. Bada boom, psh. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (59:18.762)

Kentucky, New York.

Brian Funk (59:30.186)

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

William Garrett (59:34.415)

And he, you know, he all of a sudden was like, here's what I think of mixing. He goes, people need to stop going to YouTube university and learning how to mix records. You got to experiment. And just like you were saying, you need to move this mic around. And he goes, what you got to do is you got to move around, change things until you like it. And not because you saw so-and-so do it. You know, I mean, all that information is great, but you need to take it into your own world.

And that's the way we all learned. We didn't have any other way to learn except from other people that we worked with. And then just experimentation. So the way you learned how to mix, you just got it to where you thought it sounded good. You compared it with records that you loved and tried to get it to sound as good as you could. And I just think that's so interesting. Because I think a lot of people, like you said, I remember one time

I was sitting with a friend and we were listening to T for the Tillerman, the Cat Stevens record on vinyl. He's a film composer. We were in his house in LA and there's like Leslie piano on some song. And we were talking about that. And I said to him, you know, in the old days, you know, we had to mic a piano and run it through a Leslie that was in a different space and work on that sound for hours until we got it just the way in, you know, somebody had to have that idea.

Like somebody had to say, hey, you know what we could do? Instead of just using the Lesley on the Beast 3, why don't we run the piano through it? Figure out how to technically do it, because I don't know if you've ever seen those plugs, but they have like 20,000 prompts. How the hell do you get the sound of the this and that? And I remember one time at this studio in Boston, there was a freight elevator out in the hall. So we lowered the drummer down two floors with like cords going down the elevator at like four o'clock in the morning. And you know, to get this gargantuan

Brian Funk (01:01:03.87)

Right.

William Garrett (01:01:32.687)

sound and those PCM mics had just been invented, the flat mics. So we had one duct tape to his chest and all this crap, you know, just, so it took us hours and, it was really great fun. And so I think that the fact that can just push a button and get the freight elevator drum sound two stories down sound now takes a lot of fun out of it. Although I know that it gives people who are working today, you know, a zillion tools to do cool things. Another

Brian Funk (01:01:38.826)

yeah.

William Garrett (01:02:01.218)

thing about limitations, there's so many different ways to process everything. But anyway, I just think it's an interesting thing that, you know, maybe people aren't moving those mics around the room and trying to figure out exactly what it sounds like. just going, they see somebody say, just put the mic here and put the mic here. They do it. They're like, okay, we're done. But it's more fun to like, you know, in a studio in Rhode Island one time, needed a, this is before you could download sound effects, we needed the sound of a bullwhip cracking.

Brian Funk (01:02:18.346)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:02:31.576)

for a record that we made. were doing this sort of punk rock version of the good and the bad and the ugly theme with this band called Rubber Rodeo that was punk rock. It was like Devo meets Dolly Parton. And the reason I remember this, I was just in this town having lunch with my daughters. But so like, know, three o'clock in the morning, we got like 30 feet of cable at U87, took it out in the street, had a bullwhip.

Brian Funk (01:02:41.962)

Thanks

William Garrett (01:03:00.622)

Hit the two track recording and snap the bullwhip. And on the record, you can hear the delay ricocheting off all the buildings on this street. So you can hear the sound of the street on the thing, but you know, that's a one, that's a one shot sound. Now you can just go on, you know, bullwhip crack. Thank you. Insert, drag to the spot. You know, so it was, uh, it was a lot more fun to have to figure that stuff out the way we did it.

Brian Funk (01:03:23.24)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:29.384)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:03:30.19)

And then you fly it in with the two track. You get to the spot on the multi track and you push play and you hope you hit up, didn't get it. Let's do it again. Didn't get it. Let's do it again. No, you can't just put it there. So anyway, I sound like an ancient recording engineer, but those were fun things to do. And I think that added to the excitement of the things and those sounds were specific to whatever recording that you did. Nobody else has that. I wonder where that sound is though. I'd like to find that.

Brian Funk (01:03:37.29)

All right, you can't just put it there.

Brian Funk (01:03:53.546)

Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe can upload that. You know, you mentioned this earlier about like the band's having fun and it comes through on the recording. And this is the same sort of thing. I think with these experimental things where you're, you know, let's bring it out in the street and let's do it. I know there's no fader for that on the mix, but it's in there and that adventure that that's

William Garrett (01:04:00.743)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:04:24.818)

coming into the performances of these things and I mean lowering the drummer down the elevator. I mean...

William Garrett (01:04:31.694)

I wish I remembered what project that was, but it was really fun.

Brian Funk (01:04:35.572)

But it's also, I think, a story, and it's very human thing. Today, like you said, you can download these from anywhere. You can just get them and soon enough, I mean, it's already happening, I guess, but AI is producing music and all of this, where I think these human touches, these little extra efforts that people make are really special, and a lot of them keep coming up.

for instance, on that, I think it's Bad Guy by Billie Eilish, where they recorded the walkway. I don't want to say like Australia or something, use it like for a hi-hat or something. And there was a video that was making its rounds on the internet where people saw that. And I think like how many hi-hat sounds have been recorded or just dropped in that you never even think twice about, but now this is one with a story and something human to it.

William Garrett (01:05:13.868)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Brian Funk (01:05:35.048)

and something special that happened in that moment in time. I really believe in looking for those types of things to put into your recordings, to give them those moments.

William Garrett (01:05:46.659)

Yeah, no, I fully agree. And I think that, I think there's a hybrid version that's taken hold. know we built the studio for Spotify in Los Angeles. one of the goals I tried to do was a real hybrid between sort of old and new. So, you know, so, so we, you know, we had a custom thing made so you could plug a guitar into the Leslie or play or put piano, you know, so you can make those kinds of sounds organically if you

So chose to do so. And a lot of vintage guitar amps, a lot of things. I think a lot of studios now, people are creating these great atmospheres where they have a collection of really unique and interesting instruments and amplifiers and processors so that people really can experiment with those sounds. make, at one point we bought this crazy old tape machine. I wish I could remember where it is, but it has a glowing tube in the front.

I just, got it from Jack White. had a sale, a sale and they sold all this gear. we thought this thing looks good. buy this. So yeah. So we, so I was working on some of my, I do, I do ambient music on my own under the name of Singleton. So I was working on some Singleton stuff and trying to come up with some different sounds. I would, I would, the machine barely worked and it was a quarter inch mono machine. So I would.

Brian Funk (01:06:52.714)

That's already a good story.

William Garrett (01:07:14.016)

run a guitar line over to that and record it and it would come out all crunchy and cool. Then I put it back into Pro Tools, but it was the timing of the machine was so bad that I'd use vocal line to line it back up with the original line and be able to blend it in. So I was telling John Baptiste about this and he was like, where is this machine? So we made this record, this live record and he wanted to put it on everything, which, you know, we kind of went back and forth about, but it's on a lot of stuff.

So it makes it sort of sound like it's on a 78. It's a very sonically interesting record that we made just because we found this machine that we can sort of screw things up with. And I think a lot of, you know, I was in Wynn Butler's studio in New Orleans and he has a lot of incredible gear and that sort of the way he makes records is trying to figure out how to utilize this gear to make these amazing sounds. So think there's a lot of that going on. And, but you know.

Brian Funk (01:07:52.554)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:08:13.056)

It is kind of nice that if you're sitting at home on your laptop and you need some sort of interesting sound, you can dial it up. So not to say that one way is better than the other, but, you know, it's, it's, it's, I just got a text from John saying, let's buy that. We're going to buy a tape machine. Just say, let's buy that and play. Okay. We will. I just looked at that to completely turn me away. John, let's buy that. Okay. Let's do that. so, so yeah, I think it's.

Brian Funk (01:08:32.202)

You

William Garrett (01:08:43.182)

I think it's nice to work in a hybrid world and be aware of both. Like I've been very lucky to be surrounded by amazing younger recording engineers who really have dug deep into everything that's available. So if we're in the middle of something, I'm like, what about this? They're like, here's this cool plugin that sounds like an old cassette player and you can adjust the wow and flutter and you can do this and that. I've got a terrible memory so can never remember the names of any of them. But so.

Brian Funk (01:08:45.45)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:08:57.098)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:09:11.416)

I like having access to all that too. So it's really a matter of making your artistic choices, if you can, from both worlds. But if you can't, because you don't have the gear, you don't have Jack White's old tape recorder, you don't have this kind of stuff, then it's really wonderful to be able to have some options. And I think people have just gotten so creative with plugins and people have created so many sonic sort of landscapes you can create within a DAW. It's kind of cool.

Brian Funk (01:09:13.854)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:09:41.618)

I'm so happy to be in the time period we're in, because you still have access to the old stuff and you got the new stuff too. And you can just.

William Garrett (01:09:46.729)

I'm looking at old reverbs right behind me there. know, there's tin can reverbs, oil can reverbs and some other stuff that we use that you sort of blend in. It's just nice. You know, I really, I really enjoy a hybrid of analog and digital technology. And I'm not certainly unique in that. A lot of people are making records that way, but you sort of take the best from both worlds and it's super exciting.

Brian Funk (01:10:14.782)

Yeah. Yeah. And so much of the plugin stuff, like you said, is getting really interesting. And now you can kind of do these same sort of creative things by messing around with the plugins in unorthodox ways and doing things that maybe you're not supposed to, or just experimenting in that world alone. There's so much ground for, you know, new things, new sounds.

William Garrett (01:10:43.138)

Well, and so many things that have entered our sonic palette came from using things the way they weren't supposed to be used. mean, remember, mean, AutoTune is the perfect example. Somebody just turned the knobs too far and you got T-Pain. So it's like, that was...

Brian Funk (01:10:57.791)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:11:02.152)

Yeah. And that technology I believe was for determining the depth of water. And yeah, like, but that was, I read the interview with that, the creator and he's like, I wasn't going to let it go all the way down to zero. Cause I figured no one would ever want that, but it just, his decision just on the software to not limit that knob that informed culture completely.

William Garrett (01:11:08.074)

Something like that. Yeah, that's funny. I know that's hilarious. So yeah, they

William Garrett (01:11:32.554)

It's just so hard to keep up with all the different, there's new stuff coming out every day. it's, I feel like I almost have to have a team of great friends who are digging into different areas and say, okay, what's the coolest thing you found this week? What's the coolest thing you found this week? So it's fun.

Brian Funk (01:11:43.081)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:50.163)

Well, much like what you said about the YouTube university, is, cause there's always something you can learn, right? There's always something you pick up. We can get a new technique. can learn all this is how I should make this. And it's the gear too, the equipment. There's always so much new stuff that it's very easy to get caught up in just being kind of like a, a collector or, or just like,

William Garrett (01:12:00.877)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:12:19.164)

some aficionado of the new music gear news that you're never making anything anymore.

William Garrett (01:12:26.904)

I think the real key though is to make whatever you see on YouTube or whatever you think of it, know, make it your own in some way instead of just using the stock. mean, I get, I get chipped from my contemporaries sometime for using a, you know, stock things that I like on certain plugins and all that. just go to dial up the stock thing. But, but, but I think that, when you talk about YouTube university, the, it's a great resource.

You know, it's incredible resource to be able to type in, how do I do this? And, know, have somebody tell you how to do it. That's pretty cool. But I think you have to take that in and then go, okay, let me try like four different ways of doing this until you get the sound that you like, because that's what makes the job of a mix engineer, especially unique is it's, you're getting it. You have to have those high standards and that, you know, ability to, to discern what's, what's good.

And then of course, you know, it might get redefined by other people on the creative process. It's not like in general, depending on who you are as a mixer, it might be the final word. But you know, for me, I'm always open to the collaborative. Once I've gotten into a certain place, you know, there's very few times I've said, really, do you really have to do that? Like, do you realize how loud the vocal is? But it's like, there was somebody huge. So I was like, yeah, enjoy, enjoy your super loud vocal.

Brian Funk (01:13:53.162)

Hmph.

William Garrett (01:13:54.639)

Like you said about things being too loud or too soft, in the end run it didn't matter. It was about the artist and not about the song. But anyway, yeah, think that Jimmy had a good point. A good point that you really gotta try to make these things your own. Just take it one step beyond what you see on YouTube and mess around with it a little bit. Maybe you'll come back to what, maybe you'll say, oh, I really like the original thing that came up. But I think.

Brian Funk (01:14:00.064)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:14:24.322)

That's what made all of us mixers now, you know, that are my age or had my experience, you know, we just did what we thought was best. There was nobody telling us except for the final listener. So I love listening back to stuff I did when I didn't know what I was doing. Kick drums really loud or something, they sound great. I'm kind of amazed at how good it sounds. It's like, wow, this is really, really good, really good stuff.

Brian Funk (01:14:38.41)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:14:46.1)

Hmm. Right, some surprises. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:14:54.216)

Yeah, you know, just going with what you heard, I guess. Yeah, it's a way to avoid the work nowadays too, because you can keep learning and learning without ever trying any of stuff out and experimenting and you feel like you're being productive. I'm educating myself and I've seen that a lot as a trap for a lot of people. I know it happens to me all the time or before.

William Garrett (01:14:57.795)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:15:23.112)

I should really just disconnect the internet from my computer, but there's always another way out of the kind of creative process where I can decide, like, I wonder if there's a plugin that does that. Or I wonder like, what's the best way to use this. And then next thing you know, you're just learning and not doing and not really learning because you're not doing, you're just watching information.

William Garrett (01:15:26.238)

Hahaha!

William Garrett (01:15:48.846)

That's where deadlines come in handy. You gotta get it done. You gotta get it done.

Brian Funk (01:15:50.748)

Yeah, exactly. No time for that.

I wrote down, I want to kind of come back to this a little bit. When you're doing these Spotify sessions, this whole idea is I think maybe it was before we hit record, we were kind of talking about flow and it seems to me like one of your big jobs was keeping a flow going and nurturing it. And I'm kind of curious about how you do that. What are some tricks you learned or some techniques you have or things you like to keep in mind?

William Garrett (01:16:00.952)

Sure.

William Garrett (01:16:26.37)

What was, I mean, what was interesting with those sessions was we would do some pre-production. We'd have these, you know, zoom meetings, pre-production stuff, but a lot of times the artist wouldn't be there. It was more, if they were on tour, the tour manager would be on the call about gear. And we, we had curated both the New York and LA studio with an incredible gear list of beautiful stuff. was one of the most fun parts of my job was basically to get to go guitar shopping and, and all that. And I know people that

Brian Funk (01:16:53.574)

That's a great video I'll post of all that. It's amazing.

William Garrett (01:16:55.566)

Yeah, I know that people that you know this this is beyond the discussion of what Spotify is or what they pay their artists You know, we were very lucky to be able to make music within it And you know, I understand there's a lot of people that have issues with the fact that we built a really nice studio and we bought really nice instruments So I totally get that I don't want to I didn't want to let that go by without Saying that I understand the other side of the coin, but I was very lucky I was behind a very big soundproof door making music and didn't get involved in the whole political

you know problem of what streaming is and and how difficult it's been for the creator community to make a living with that incredible shift of how the money works in the in that business, but anyway So I don't want to sound like I don't get that as I talk about being able to get cool instruments But anyway and pre-production we would Send the gear list back and forth or not, but generally we wouldn't talk to the artists very much, but we'd

trying to narrow it in the song. Sometimes we didn't know what the cover was going to be. We try to emphasize we really wanted their original song to be different, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Sometimes artists just came in and basically played their song and we would try on the spot. But the thing is, since we had a time limit, I would play whatever role it took for me to keep things going and keep everybody jolly. Sometimes people would bring their own

producer or the MD that was on the road with the band would sort of step into that role or the artist. Other times they really needed my help at figuring out stuff. We'd change arrangements. We'd change tempos. We'd do all kinds of stuff like that. And I think that it was just, I'm trying to think there's no like definitive way to say it's sort of like how you do it. It's a matter of reading the room. That's such a huge deal with producers. You've really got to know how everybody's feeling.

So you really, from the minute they walk in the door, you can kind of tell how you need to approach it to make sure that they're comfortable. One of the great things about the studios was they were super vibed out. So when people walked in, would, they would walk through an office space into a room. It was very much not an office space because the studios were in house at Spotify headquarters. So that was cool. We would have, you know, they just looked great. They felt great. They smelled great.

William Garrett (01:19:21.338)

Everything was great about the vibe. And then we had interesting gear, which meant every band knows about gear. They've been in studios, been on the road, they have guitars, blah, blah. And you can immediately, that could be our icebreaker. Like, you know, here, look at this, you know, 57 Gibson Country Western. That was in the studio for a long time. And so that was one way we had the thing set up so the vibe was comfortable right when they walked in. And if they'd just been to

Brian Funk (01:19:35.53)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:19:51.341)

serious FM to do something. And it had been like a conference room with a couple of microphones in it. And they walked into a studio that looked like, you know, you know, East West or, you know, Capitol and be like, this is cool. We didn't expect this. but like, you know, when salt and pepper came in, one of the women turned to me and said, what are we doing here? Like the artists had no idea. So that started me off with like, let me, obviously no one's told you. So we'll talk about.

Brian Funk (01:20:04.84)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:20:16.126)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:20:20.265)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:20:20.556)

you know, what we're going to do. She was like, okay, let's do it. And, and then other artists came in, Uber prepared, like changing everything, doing all this stuff. So in terms of keeping the flow going, it's really reading the room, keeping them excited about doing something that's unique. was my whole goal was these songs. The cover was kind of always unique because it's a cover. So they could play it. wasn't their song, but making, you know, their song unique.

So sometimes I would even be granted access like I recorded Dile Horne in London at air and they gave me access to the rehearsal the night before. So I got to discuss this one song, black and white with him. And I said, what if you change the tempo, pull the tempo way back, did this, did that. So I was actually really producing and it was great. We recorded the next day and he actually recorded three songs and said, two, they released two and not this one. then.

Brian Funk (01:21:01.097)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:21:18.84)

the record label released it on their own. mixed it and it's become a big, not this new version, old version has become a nice track for him. So I think it was more about just reading the room, making sure everybody was comfortable. And my thing is I wasn't precious or overbearing about my role. My role was to facilitate. if somebody came in that was more in charge than me, unless I...

Brian Funk (01:21:39.432)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:21:46.339)

saw him going in direction that I didn't think was positive for the track and could figure out a way to subtly get in there or make a suggestion, I would do it. But you know, if it was somebody needed to get a cup of coffee, I'd be happy to get the cup of coffee. Like I don't really, the outcome of the day was what was super important. And the fact that we were all hugging by the end of the day. You know, that was the whole thing. For me, the greatest success story is not only the track you come out with.

with the relationship you build in a short period of time. And I'm sort of literally mean that like if an artist would come in and kind of shake your hand and look the other direction, by the end of it, I want them to be like, this has been the most fun I've like ever had. Like we've never been in an environment like this and been able to create like this. And so on the days where you've got that reaction at the end after a tepid start, that meant that I did my job right. And then I started to mix the track.

Brian Funk (01:22:28.49)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:22:39.636)

Hmm.

Yeah.

William Garrett (01:22:43.566)

So there's more work to do. But anyway, I hope that answers the question. It's, think reading the room as a record producer is super important. I've seen some people go in as producers with sort of sledgehammers and demand things, and that's just not my style. I feel like you get more out of the artist. And so many artists now are producers. They're producing their own records. So, you know, and if that's the case, just help them do what is it they do best.

Brian Funk (01:22:57.086)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:23:05.724)

Yeah, that term has changed a lot.

Brian Funk (01:23:11.742)

Mm-hmm.

William Garrett (01:23:11.918)

And I think if you handle it right, when it comes time for you to make a suggestion or do something, they're more accepting of that. Cause up to that point, you kind of let them do their own thing and you're, you're respecting their recording process. So it was, it was a valuable lesson in just sort of letting people navigate through this day and then helping, you know, where you can help. And luckily we have the facilities and know, great engineers and people that, that made that.

Brian Funk (01:23:27.518)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:23:36.958)

Yeah.

William Garrett (01:23:41.528)

made that work.

Brian Funk (01:23:45.225)

Makes a lot of sense. I think even as a player too, you're part of what's coming out here is this no ego involved. Like the mission is to make the song better. We have this collective goal and sometimes that means I gotta not play for half of it or at all or just be there to know that and be comfortable with that.

William Garrett (01:24:05.335)

Yeah, right.

But I think it's tough. I think a lot of people can't do that. I think a lot of people are trying to get what they feel so strongly about what they think is best. And they're not maybe thinking about the collective thing. Ego does play a big role in that. And we all have some, a little bit of ego. We don't want to be completely shut down. But I think it's all about how you approach it to get your ideas in there. then having no expectations about those ideas being followed through on.

We got to do so many amazing experimental. when, when Phoebe Bridgers came in, she did a cover of Friday I'm in love. And then about two or three days, she did it with full band and it was sort of kind of like the original strummy cool. And then, she called and she said, you know, I'm not digging that, you know, and I was kind of like, well, we never have really done had somebody come back.

But you know, I think we should do it. So I talked to the powers of being, we all agreed that she could come back for a day. man, the piano player that she brought back is gonna completely, his name, I am so sorry, I can't remember his name. I think I just looked at a post from him today. Anyway, it just the two of them and myself and our engineer, Jack Mason. And we just spent a whole day experimenting with this song and it's amazing.

It's an amazing version of the song. It's super ghostly, interesting. Some magazine did a whole list of like Cure cover songs and named it as one of the top 10 amazing songs. It just became this thing. But we were in position where, she had the positive attitude to experiment and she had to run. she sort of graced, was Gabriel Cahan is the guy who was the piano player, I think.

William Garrett (01:26:06.478)

He, uh, Jesus said, all those locals, then you figure out, you know, where they ought to go. So, you know, I got to really do my job and play around with balance and put in what I thought was best. And, so anyway, it turned out to be an incredible song. So those were, um, lucky days. like I said, 99.9 % of people that came in had that kind of attitude of like, let's do something different. It's hard to get people to not play their guitar.

Brian Funk (01:26:10.57)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:26:35.052)

So I'd always be like, how about this one? And some people say, nope, I'm gonna stick with mine or not use their pedals that they use every time or not because they know everybody's into that. part of my little nudging thing was like, how about this? I always gotta be in the corner. How about this? Let's try this.

Brian Funk (01:26:37.226)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:26:44.167)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:26:52.778)

Well, when you got instruments like that.

William Garrett (01:26:56.288)

Right. mean, that was the key to having those instruments was that it made for a creative playground for the artist. And that's how you got a cool, interesting. So people, people seemed, I guess if they've been streamed 10 billion times, I was just about to say, if people are listening to these and then I realized, yeah, I guess if they've been streamed 10 billion times, somebody's listening to them. Somebody's listening to them. So, but anyway, tons, tons and tons of fun, but yeah, flow's important.

Brian Funk (01:27:00.03)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:17.748)

Somebody heard him. Yeah.

William Garrett (01:27:26.24)

and deadline, know, time restrictions kind of make it happen. So it's, it's good. But I think, you know, experienced producers such as myself, you've been doing it so long. You've made those mistakes of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or somebody else says it. And you've got to like try to, you know, get the vibe back. And it's just, it's a precious thing, the vibe in the studio. And it just, it's, I love, I love working hard to create that for the artist to make sure.

Brian Funk (01:27:38.847)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:27:48.33)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:27:55.631)

I mean, you we just did with John Baptiste. worked on what ended up being part of the soundtrack for Saturday night. The movie that just came out, which is about the first night of Saturday night live great movie. And we did it to 24 track analog tape. Used every input of the need V up in studio, see it power station, 13 piece band, you know, big horn section, three percussionist drummer, two guitar players, bass, da da da.

John had, I built this amazing keyboard village for John with all these amazing keyboards. Anyway, we, yeah, that's what I call it. The keyboard village. So you can basically reach everything and get to everything. But right. It was beautiful. And I had it so I could see him, most everybody else. So he could give me any direction he needed or whatever. And, know, we, it took a lot of thought into how that session was set up, what was happening. You know, we were very fearful of.

Brian Funk (01:28:28.522)

Village.

Brian Funk (01:28:36.49)

Sounds like a nice place to live.

William Garrett (01:28:52.492)

technical issues with the tape machine because it hadn't been used for a long time. Console had been gone through completely, but there could have been, you know, crunchiness and weirdness in the console. were obviously recording everything to Pro Tools with all of its separate inputs. And we're then printing the Pro Tools off the repro heads of the multi-track. So we did this day, I don't know, we were there 10 hours, maybe 11 hours. It was incredible. We made something like five hours worth of music.

And, um, and one of the greatest things we did was I've done this with John before. And, know, we were talking about how long a reel of tape lasts. If you go at 15, it lasts around 32 minutes. So, um, the tech Mark Ricci at, uh, the power station came up with this amazing idea. So we put a little tiny camera on the counter on the Studer machine, and then we put two tiny video monitors on stands in John's keyboard village. So no matter which way he was facing, he could see those things.

But nobody else in the band could see them. So I said, John, around 32 minutes, it's going to run out of tape. Because everything was improvised. He was just rolling with these takes that were like five to 10 minutes long. and I thought, you know, we're going to run out of tape at some point, you know. John is so amazing that he nailed it every time. Like the band would be going crazy and then he would count off an ending and they would stop and the tape would roll off the reel.

And I'd look at him and he'd look at me and I'd be like, how did you do that, man? That was amazing. But the point I was making about all the experience and everything is when we left today, it may be the most flawless session I've ever done. The team that we had together, my engineer, Carl LaSpoka, the whole power station team, it was unbelievable. And all the players were, of course, top notch, amazing. Everybody's super nice. We had a ball.

The director of the film is there, his name escapes me, Jason Reitman. Jason comes up to and he goes, how does that actually, how does that happen? Like how does that even happen? And I was like, you have no idea, like what we've been doing for the last 48 hours to make sure this went as smooth as it did. so, you know, it takes experience, it takes prep to take some, you know, you put together a great team.

William Garrett (01:31:19.572)

and you get it done. And so it's exciting. It was great to hear the music in the movie. So it was one of those experiences where sort of experience and a good team that all know each other really, really paid off.

Brian Funk (01:31:37.983)

Yeah, and you say a couple things that stick out for me as lessons I've learned is these ideas of like, nothing's precious, where you can let go of your ideas, but the vibe is precious and the relationship between the people. That's been a big thing for me with collaborating with people, whereas maybe when I was younger, this part has to go this way, you know? But now it's like...

William Garrett (01:32:05.068)

Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:32:08.05)

The goal is to be able to do this again. It's the long game. So keeping those relationships.

William Garrett (01:32:11.97)

Yep. Well, and what becomes precious is what you created that day from the relationships with the people. know, month later you're walking down the street and you run into the drummer that was on that session. He's like, man, that was the most fun I've ever had. And you're like, you know, well done. Mission accomplished. then the music that comes out of that, it just has a spirit that comes from how you set up the day and how you set up the working environment for the artist.

And so, you know, for me to have John Baptiste, know, Celine Dion, know, Shania Twain all walk out at end of the day and say, that was great. You've got people who've been in a billion recording sessions. And so as much as the music is great, it's almost as a producer, the highest compliment is like, that was a really good experience and we made something really great. And, know, it doesn't matter what role you play, how that happened. The fact that.

You were in charge of making it happen. That's the, that's the role. And that's the sort of the payoff in the end. So many, so many great, I can't even think. I always have to look at the Spotify singles playlist and I'm like, oh yeah, that one we did so many, we used to do like four sessions a week. I had a week, had a week. People always used to ask me or still do what's your favorite session. And I am.

Brian Funk (01:33:18.676)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:33:29.674)

That's wild.

William Garrett (01:33:38.649)

So I can't pick one that's a favorite because there are so many good ones, but there was one week where on Monday night we did, went Marcellus and then jazz Lincoln center orchestra, which is a septet featuring John Bautista. That's when I met John for the first time. And then the next day we did, who's that redhead kid who sells a million records and plays acoustic guitar at Sharon. can never think of his name. We did Ed Sheeran. Sorry, Ed didn't mean to call you.

Brian Funk (01:34:03.242)

is Ed Sheeran, right?

William Garrett (01:34:08.62)

the Redhead kid, we did Ed Sheeran on Tuesday, we Clean Bandit on Wednesday, and we did Sting on Friday. And it's like, okay, there you go. a lot of the, in the beginning, now the program is, they're not doing as much and they're moving in sort of a video direction, in the heyday of it, we'd always release a two-sided single every Wednesday. And then sometimes we'd have...

Brian Funk (01:34:20.138)

There's a week.

William Garrett (01:34:38.722)

We'd have so many artists, we'd do two singles on a Wednesday. That became sort of our spot to release instead of releasing on Friday when everybody else releases. So it was great. It's great. But the great thing is about that gig is I used all the experience from, you know, being a freelance producer engineer to working, running the studio for Sony ATV to having my own studio electric craft while still being freelancers and doing all these crazy projects. And then

I was able to bring all that. And then when I was honored with supervising the build for the LA studio with this incredible team that we put together of people that all contributed so much to how that place turned out, including my amazing boss, Christangelo and Bradley and Jack Mason. Everybody put in so much work and Josh Morris over at WSDG and John Storick. It was all about experience.

It was all about, know, I've been sitting in this chair so long. This is where I want this knob to be. I go over here and this is where I want, you know, I want to be able to turn her on and adjust this. I want, know, and I want to be able to see all the way through. We had a big wrestling match over the sides of the window and it turned out we have this big, beautiful, you know, kind of East West Studio One style window where you can basically see everything. And so, but that was all just knowing from experience what had worked.

And that worked for me and for the artists that I'd worked with up until the point of putting something together like that and creating that flow you mentioned earlier. All that stuff is what contributes to the flow. And then just knowing how to manage it on the day of and knowing when to speak, when not to speak, when to read the room. I mean, reading the room and knowing all that stuff. That's what is super important. And so that's great. And once you get to that.

Brian Funk (01:36:12.052)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:36:30.154)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:36:34.47)

Once all those things are in place, it's pretty comfortable. A lot of people go into sessions with lots of anxiety and stuff like that, but once you've got technical pieces in place, like your gear's all working and stuff like that, and then you've got your creative pieces in place, there's stuff for people to experiment with, and they're in a really beautiful space that feels good, then it kind of goes well, as long as you don't say the wrong thing.

Brian Funk (01:36:59.626)

Hmm.

Right. The last variable. Yeah, I could imagine. And as we said before, it's a lot of vulnerability. And also, when you got big stars like this and people with tons of experience that know what they're doing, to know when to let them do what they're doing.

William Garrett (01:37:04.3)

Gotta be careful. Be careful what you say.

William Garrett (01:37:22.178)

totally, totally got to respect that and, and, and, and let them, let them do their thing. Cause that's what they were there for. They're not there to do my thing. They're not there to do the engineer's thing. They're there to do their thing. And especially in this circumstance, you know, I mean, I was, I was assigned to them as a producer, you know, and somebody who's making a record, they decide, I want to get, you know, this person to do my record. And there's that, but in this case, I was, you know, humbly and gratefully assigned.

Brian Funk (01:37:30.474)

Mm-hmm.

William Garrett (01:37:51.673)

to work with them for the day and through the mixes and through everything else that we did. you know, that was a great honor and compliment and I did not take it lightly. And so my approach was different if, you know, artist A, it's a, William, make this record with me. then, I mean, it be a similar approach, but I might be a little bit more in it. But this way you really had to read what was necessary and what they needed from you to help with the thing. And it was great. You know, I mean,

She had Twain came in to do two songs and felt so comfortable. She did three songs. She goes, let's just do another song. So he put out a three song Spotify single, which we'd never done before because she's in there too. So, know, the fact that she felt comfortable enough and was having so much fun with the band and everybody that we just cut another record. So it was cool.

Brian Funk (01:38:41.386)

Now if you came in and said, I'm gonna do this, we're doing it my way. And nothing else. Probably wouldn't get that third track, right? Maybe not even the first two.

William Garrett (01:38:47.246)

Yes, that would have been no, no way. No way. You you know, it's crazy. But yeah, you all out there who are hearing this and haven't looked at the list, I'm just looking at it now. It's like, oh yeah, right. There's Def Leppard. Oh yeah, right. There's Courtney Barnett. Oh yeah, right. There's two yards. Oh yeah. You know, there's, you know, I'm just scrolling through all the stuff we did. You know, it's crazy. It even blows my mind.

Brian Funk (01:39:12.602)

It's a who's who of... Yeah.

William Garrett (01:39:16.686)

I mean, I didn't do every single one. don't want to take credit because some of them, like especially during COVID, people did them on their own. during COVID, got to mix Alanis Morissette in my kitchen table with a laptop because we couldn't go into any studios. So she and her band recorded it at all their different studios and then sent it to me to mix. So that was really, really fun. And she did an amazing version of whatever her big song is. can't think of it.

Brian Funk (01:39:23.146)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:39:35.338)

Wow.

Brian Funk (01:39:41.738)

Probably you want to know, right?

William Garrett (01:39:43.885)

Yeah, you ought to know, yeah, kind of a slower, more angry version. And it was amazing. Just slowing it down a little bit and making it more acoustic made it even hit harder. Because you can really dig into what the lyrics. But you know, there's Tony Bennett, Diana Carl, there's all this stuff. fun. I gotta stop.

Brian Funk (01:39:46.57)

Yeah, I can see how that could work.

Brian Funk (01:39:57.45)

Hmm.

Right, because.

Brian Funk (01:40:04.712)

That's an angry song, so the rock band... But when you pull the anger back a little and then it's just... Yeah, I could... There's more... Almost cuts deeper.

William Garrett (01:40:12.75)

It's an amazing version.

William Garrett (01:40:18.402)

Yeah, exactly. but yeah, it's interesting. had a friend who's a film director, say when I got the job, he said he'd never seen anybody get a job that that used every facet of the person they were hiring. So it was like all the different things that I do well were all part of this job. So it was great. It was really great. It was an amazing opportunity. It's nice to have all those songs in the pipeline. Yeah, it was for sure.

Brian Funk (01:40:33.226)

Mmm.

Brian Funk (01:40:41.512)

Yeah, well that's like a dream job there. For anybody in any field where you feel like, yeah, I'm using my skills. that's a frustration when you feel like a lot of your talents are untapped or the specialties are not getting used.

William Garrett (01:41:02.284)

Yeah. And I think if it hadn't been for all those crazy, you know, sessions that I do when I didn't really know what I was doing and all that kind of stuff, it actually sort of hit right at the right time. And I learned a ton during that time period as well. So going forward, now I have all this, this, these new experiences that will inform how I continue to work in the future. So, you know, do a lot of stuff with John mixing stuff for jazz at Lincoln center.

Brian Funk (01:41:13.61)

Mm-hmm.

William Garrett (01:41:32.15)

I'm doing some other upcoming stuff. it's been, that experience has really helped me a lot in how I work now. So it's a matter of always learning, never stop.

Brian Funk (01:41:41.62)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:48.602)

It sounds like lot of different personalities coming at you constantly too, different workflows, different... even within your role, different roles you have to play, different levels of involvement. So that sounds like a real quick way to learn.

William Garrett (01:41:58.572)

Right. Yeah, exactly.

William Garrett (01:42:04.75)

It definitely is, it definitely is. And it keeps you on your toes. If you want to keep the gig, you got to make sure everybody's feeling good. That can be a fun responsibility.

Brian Funk (01:42:08.83)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:42:14.046)

Yeah, well, I mean, always be learning, you see. That's a great philosophy to have. I'm sure it's a big part of how you've had so much success, just keeping that mind open.

William Garrett (01:42:25.07)

I guess so. Keeping it, yeah. it's, you know, it just, it gets, it gets better and better. The more you know, the more you can feel. I was about to say confident. You don't always feel confident going into situations. I just did a session the other day that it was something I hadn't done for a long time. I was like, can I pull this off? But you know, it all came, it's like riding a bicycle. It all came back and everybody was super nice and we got it done and it sounded great. So I think it's good to be a little nervous when you go into something.

and not be too overconfident, but it does build confidence that you can pull these things off. But every session is a new experience and that's what makes it exciting.

Brian Funk (01:43:05.768)

Yeah. Yeah, if it was easy, right, it'd get boring. And that's where the glory is. I remind myself that a lot when I'm working on songs or rehearsing with the band, if when they get, cause it always gets tough. There's always a time where there's a challenge and the problem you got to figure out or whatever it is, but it's part of the process. That's, that's why there's glory to it. That's why it feels good when you make it to the end.

William Garrett (01:43:09.42)

That's right. Everybody would be doing.

William Garrett (01:43:34.477)

Yeah, no, it's good. it's, and you know, we're lucky that we have, you know, in the end, we have the song, we have the track and it, you know, that hopefully will last forever. I assume it will. And it's just, it's nice to, to have that and have that combined with everybody having a good experience. To me, that's, that's the real reward is a great, a great track that you come up with, but also that it was a day that you'll always remember or a month or however long you worked on the project.

that maybe had moments of intensity, but they were all for the cause of that project. And you get to work with amazingly talented people. I always credit the source material. It's the artist, it's not the guitar, it's not the amp, it's not the signal path, it's not the mic, it's not the mic, it's the guy or gal, man or woman playing the guitar.

and what they put into it and the sound they get out of it. And I've been so lucky to work with so many people that are just incredibly talented. So for me to have the honor to put a microphone in front of them or their instrument and translate it through all this stuff to an end product is incredible. And when you do that, it's easy. I mean, when you have somebody on that level, I always tell the story that I...

struggled with somebody in a crappy home studio to do a guitar take and we were like 12 hours to work and it was a sort of brand new crappy Fender guitar, brand new crappy Marshall amp. was like, that was a day. The next day I start this record with Michael Monroe, the lead singer of How Do I Rock? This guitar player named Phil Grande, used to play with Joe Cocker and all these people. He has a guitar tech there, vintage, watt and Marshalls.

There's about nine beautiful guitars all tweaked to perfection and he's an incredible guitar player. And all I did was just push the fader up. I was like, okay, we're done. We got the sound. And it wasn't me. It was all that stuff that got it back to me that made it sound good. And so it's, it's, it's a, very honored to be able to, to translate what all these really amazing, talented, creative people are doing.

Brian Funk (01:45:38.922)

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:45:58.602)

It's awesome. It's inspiring to hear you talk about it and your enthusiasm is clear as a bell.

William Garrett (01:46:01.87)

Hmm.

William Garrett (01:46:06.99)

There you go. I appreciate that. Appreciate that. It gets me excited talking about it because it is great and I'm very grateful to all the fun stuff and all the fun stuff ahead.

Brian Funk (01:46:11.241)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:46:18.182)

Anything ahead that you can tell us about or that you're excited about or...

William Garrett (01:46:23.214)

Well, now I'm excited about more sessions and things like that. I am going to doing this video series called In the Studio, which is just a sort of short blast of some of these stories. And I haven't quite finished it yet, but it'll be coming out, just me yakking about some of this stuff. So you basically got half the stories tonight, so you don't even have to watch it. But doing that and then.

Brian Funk (01:46:34.856)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:46:44.082)

Hahaha

William Garrett (01:46:50.264)

Still working on more Singleton music, gonna do a collaborative record with a bunch of other ambient and interesting artists. So people wanna dial up Singleton on the old Spotify, it's there and all the other platforms. And otherwise just, I'm kind of trying to get re-energized about music itself. One issue you have when you do this all the time is I used to joke all the time that I kind of hate music. Like when I come home, I don't wanna listen to music. People go, did you listen to this? I'm like, it all sounds.

Brian Funk (01:47:18.888)

Yeah, right.

William Garrett (01:47:19.736)

fricking same, you know, and so, so, I'm not a big New Year's resolution person, around the coming of the new year this year, I was like, you know, I need to do, cause I just worked a job, bringing a studio to market. So it was more of an administrative job and I didn't do a session for three or four months. And, I was like, I just got to, I've got to get back to music, you know, I've got to figure out. So I've been pushing myself to listen to a lot of stuff. I've been.

you know, trying to help people with projects that maybe don't have any kind of financial reward, but it's like, you're good. I just want to help you make this music, you know, getting involved in things, listening a lot, going to see more music. So, so that's sort of my goal moving forward is to get realigned with, with loving music. So we'll see how that goes. So.

Brian Funk (01:48:15.422)

Yeah, I bet it'll go well and probably only feed back into what you do anyway.

William Garrett (01:48:20.463)

That's the point, is to get that feedback loop of love going on all fronts.

Brian Funk (01:48:22.313)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:48:26.526)

Yeah. Well, I'm sure you're pouring it into the work. So it's not like, you know, sometimes you do need to.

William Garrett (01:48:32.394)

Yeah, that's why I don't want to put a record on when I get home after a 15 hour session.

Brian Funk (01:48:37.776)

Yeah, mean even a single song is like that. It has some nice dynamics once in a while and that's why there's gaps between tracks on an album. Just to take a breath, yeah.

William Garrett (01:48:46.419)

Exactly, exactly. You need a minute. You need a minute. Cool.

Brian Funk (01:48:52.19)

This has been great. I appreciate the time you've spent and the stories you've told.

William Garrett (01:48:56.066)

Well, thank you so much for the time. Yeah. I hope I didn't go ramble on too much. As the Led Zeppelin song says, I wouldn't ramble on too much.

Brian Funk (01:49:00.51)

No, no, no, no. Yeah. Not at all. Any place you like to send people to check out your work? Website, any social media?

William Garrett (01:49:07.288)

Cool.

William Garrett (01:49:11.886)

You know what, being somebody who doesn't think about putting their stuff out, just my Instagram is probably the best way to keep up, which is ElectraCraft, which is the name of my studio. And also one of these days I want to put together a sort of friends and family playlist of all the stuff I've done over the years. A lot of it being the Spotify stuff and just having one place to go. really from 2016 to 2023,

Brian Funk (01:49:30.698)

That'd be nice, yeah.

Yeah.

William Garrett (01:49:40.16)

is really Spotify singles. That was my 24-7 work. going all the way back to the first single we released by Kaleo and the first session we do with Ivo Donovan, there's just all kinds of stuff on that. And there's, for me listening to that, there's growth. I can hear sort of growth in that stuff. But we really captured a lot of amazing stuff.

Brian Funk (01:50:08.042)

Those are pretty good places to look.

William Garrett (01:50:09.474)

So yeah, that would be my, yeah, mean, make it 10 billion and one, listen. Exactly. Cool, man.

Brian Funk (01:50:15.422)

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Well, thank you and thank you to everyone listening. Have a great day. Cool, man. Thank you so much. That was awesome.

William Garrett (01:50:24.918)

Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much.

podcastBrian Funkmusic production podcast, William garrett, spotify