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In this first episode of #OffTheRecord, we are joined by Chuck Ainlay, the music producer, recording engineer and mixer known for his Grammy-winning and multi-platinum-selling work with iconic acts like Peter Frampton, Dire Straits and Taylor Swift.

In this conversation, Chuck reveals how a personal recommendation from Nashville steel player Paul Franklin helped him land the dream gig of working with Dire Straits.

From what at first seemed like a rocky start, Chuck would go on to build a deep and productive creative partnership and friendship with Mark Knopfler, with the two working together across multiple solo projects over the years. This is the moment where it all began.

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They were like the biggest band in the world at the time. I mean, they had had the biggest album ever. They had had the biggest tour ever. And this was like the next album. So pretty intense for me.

I was working on a record here in Nashville. It was behind schedule and I get a phone call. I pick up the phone and it’s, this guy’s got like this really extravagant English accent. But I thought it was a friend kind of playing a prank on me, you know? And I said, listen, I’m too busy now, you’ll have to call back later. And hung up.

I get home that evening and my wife goes, um, did Dire Straits management call you? And I was like, oh no, are you kidding me? Fortunately they called back the next day and off I went to London. Mark had been in Nashville and made a record with Paul Franklin, who’s widely considered the best steel player ever.

He had said, well, if we’re going to put Dire Straits back together, I want Paul involved in this record. So he basically went to Paul and he said, you know, who’s great in Nashville? And Paul said, we should get Chuck. That’s why I always say the musicians are your best friends, so you have to be very kind to them when you’re making records.
For the Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum-selling mix engineer Jeff Braun (Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll), his role as a mixer is defined by simply ‘sweetening’ the intention and hard work of the artist and producer, rather than injecting his own sonic stamp onto the project.

In this episode of #TilYouMakeIt, Jeff Braun speaks on the various ways he approaches mixing and why adapting his creative process to suit each project is a crucial step in maximizing and doing justice to the sound and style of the song.

#TilYouMakeIt chronicles stand-out moments from the careers of the world’s most esteemed producers, mixers, and engineers.

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I don’t want to put my sonic stamp on everything because then everything sounds like me, not the artist. I want it to sound like what the producer and the artist worked so hard for. I just want to sweeten that.

I’d rather not have like a signature sound because my whole thing is I’m trying to improve upon what I was given. The production process and the producer should kind of have that on the tracks and then I want to come in and elevate that five percent, ten percent, just get it across the finish line.

If the session comes to me as stems, that’s kind of one process because then I can use everything how I want to use it. I can set the session up how I want to set it up. I can do the routing, I can do the subgroups, I can do anything kind of how I want it.

If it comes in as a session, I’m working out of the producer session and there are certain times where I can’t unbuild it and put it into something that I want to work in because it changes sonically too much, so I want to work where they left off and if that’s crazy routing, if that’s something that I don’t normally do, I just have to adapt and make that work.

I’ve got almost every plug-in there is and if it’s something that is new I’ll just get it, you kind of have to because you have to start where the producer left off.
Five-time Grammy Award-winning mixer, engineer and producer F. Reid Shippen (Kenny Chesney, Ingrid Michaelson, Gloria Gaynor) shares his take on the special bond between mixing and mastering engineers.

Watch as Shippen reflects on when he first discovered the work of Grammy-nominated mastering engineer, owner of @infrasonicsound, and now long-term collaborator Pete Lyman (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile).

#TilYouMakeIt chronicles stand-out moments from the careers of the world’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.

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TRANSCRIPT

Well, uh, we met on Tinder, and, uh, no, I’m totally kidding. Ha, ha, ha.

The first time I knew of Pete is I did a record, and they sent it out for mastering, and I didn’t know who was mastering it.

It came back and it sounded amazing. And it sounded like [FAMOUS MASTERING GUY] Right? Who is incredible. And I was like, Oh, I know who you guys sent this to, you sent it to …. I recognize this. It’s killer.

And they were like, No, this is Pete Lyman. I was like, Who’s Pete Lyman? That’s how we met. He ended up, um, moving to Nashville and we just ended up collaborating on a bunch of stuff because our styles are pretty compatible.

You start to curate the relationships that are simpatico, and Pete and I work really well together, so it just kind of became a natural fit.
Nashville-based producer, engineer, and music production advocate Jeff Balding (Eagles, Dan + Shay, Jelly Roll) reveals how it felt to work for one of the world’s biggest bands, with over 200 million records sold and countless awards under their belt. It is no surprise that working with a band of this calibre is a major #PinchYourself moment for Jeff.

Maybe it’s working or jamming with a childhood hero or hearing a vocal that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

This is #PinchYourself. Create your own once-in-a-lifetime moments with an extended one-month trial of LISTENTO, when you use the code PINCH at checkout.

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My experience working with the Eagles has been great. That’s a band that, gosh, who doesn’t love them?

I grew up loving them, so to get a chance to work with them was a great experience. I worked with Don on his solo record as well, and Stan Lynch, who co-produced it with Don.

It’s always interesting when you go into different camps, because they have their style of production, their style and technique of what gets their attention, especially in a mix. But even during tracking, same thing.

And the great thing about Don was he’s so vocal focused on the music. Something would happen or something in the mix if, if a move was a little abrupt while the vocal is playing or something.

It’d be like, “no, you know what, that’s distracting from the vocal. We need to make sure we stay centered here”. So he was very good about keeping a focus of where things were going.

I mean, you listen to Eagles records, all the classics, and you go, those parts are just, everything’s in the right place.

And by accident, it’s like, a lot of searching to find those things. I mean, they had their ducks in a row.
Today, we are back at Blackbird Studios to speak with the studios’ former operations manager and resident drum tech, Paul Simmons, as he reflects favorably on his experience touring with various heavy hitters in the American rock scene.

From landing his first gig at the age of twenty with American Southern rockers Black Oak Arkansas to traveling the world with Petra, and spending six years touring with Cinderella’s lead songwriter Thomas Keifer, Paul’s dedication and precision playing behind the kit would eventually lead him to accepting the role of Blackbird Studios’ operations manager, and of course presiding over its enviable Alladin’s Cave of drum kits.

#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of stories capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.

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When I first got a gig, I was twenty, I went out with a band called Black Oak Arkansas, and they were really huge in the seventies.

And I get this call, “Hey, do you want to come on the road with us? The drummer’s got to leave” and I’m like, yes, let’s go.

So I’m out on the road. I’m twenty years old. I’m playing with Black Oak, Arkansas, and it was a blast, did that for a while. And then I got the bug. I ended up getting a gig with a band called the Reverend Horton Heat and also played with the band Petra.

Which was incredible. We went all over the world. Those guys are great musicians and they had just released a really heavy rock album. So I was gung ho. That was great.

Then I ended up doing some session stuff for a while. And I went out with Tom Keifer from Cinderella for a while, which was great. One year turned into six, cause it just kept going and it was cool.

When the opportunity came up to be the operations manager here at Blackbird Studios, I jumped at it. That’s a cool opportunity.
In this episode of #TilYouMakeIt, Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum-selling mixing engineer Jeff Braun (Jason Aldean, Elle King, Nelly) reflects on having to improvise a makeshift vocal booth to cut Kane Brown’s vocals in Nashville with one of the world’s most sought-after vocal producers, Kuk Harrell, running the session from Los Angeles.

Five-time Grammy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee Kuk Harrell is responsible for defining the role of the modern vocal producer and has worked with artists like Rihanna, Beyonce, Celine Dion, Mary J. Blige and Lorde.

#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of stories capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.

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TRANSCRIPT

I cut a bunch of vocals on Kane Brown songs. I got to work with Kuk Harrell and he produced like all those Rihanna vocal stuff. So he was producing from LA and we were cutting it here in Nashville.

We did Kane Brown and H.E.R Blessed & Free. We did Kane Brown and Swae Lee and Khalid. Kuk was in LA and I was at Kane’s house, so I set up like a makeshift vocal booth with blankets in their living room and we Audiomovered back and forth so that he could hear the session and then he would remote desktop into the system that I had set up at Kane’s house.

And the process was like, it was pretty seamless. He was producing the vocal. And we were just capturing it in the room

LISTENTO, it’s crazy. The technology’s amazing.
In this episode of #TilYouMakeIt, seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer Vance Powell (Chris Stapleton, Buddy Guy, Jack White) speaks on the delicate relationship between artists and their collaborators.

#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of stories chronicling those moments and capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.

LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code TILYOUMAKEIT at checkout.

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Nurturing relationships with the artist is a little bit like nurturing a relationship with your mother-in-law. You want to do it, but you don’t want to become too friendly.

I want to know them. I want to know about them. I’d love to hear about their children, but unless they reach out to me, then I’m cool if we work together. We know each other. I respect them. They respect me. But I’m not saying, Hey, why don’t we do this? Or wouldn’t it be cool if we all went to the movies or you know, because they got life and that life doesn’t have anything to do with me when it’s not here.

Every relationship you have with an artist has a expiration date and a lot of times that expiration date will come and go and people will try and hang on and hang on and hang on. And that’s sad, but it’s human nature.

You know? It’s happened to me. It happened to me a little bit with Jack White. I mean, I worked with him for eight years straight on every single thing, and then I wasn’t, and it was because I was busy and it’s totally good.

Like I’m totally, we’re totally good. We work together afterwards, we’re totally good,

But I’m not calling him up and asking anybody to go to movies with me or whatever. It’s just, just weird. Don’t do it.
For today’s #TilYouMakeIt, we are back in Nashville at Blackbird Studio to speak with sound engineer and studio owner John McBride (Garth Brooks, Martina McBride, Stevie Nicks) as shares why he built his beloved studio.

Known for its state-of-the-art music production facilities and vast collection of vintage and modern recording equipment, Blackbird gives artists the ability to paint with every color in the palette and has created a space in which iconic acts like Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton and countless others have created the records they want to make.

#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of films with audio professionals chronicling those stand-out moments from their careers and capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.

LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code TILYOUMAKEIT at checkout.

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We have a t-shirt on the back that says “Either you rock or you suck” and all it really means is if you’re gonna do anything, don’t half-ass it. Do it. Right.

Part of the reason I built Blackbird Studio was that LA and New York treated Nashville like a redheaded stepchild, I thought. My goal was I wanna build a studio that’ll kick the shit out of anything in LA or New York.

I look at the artist, producer, and engineer as painters and one of the reasons we have so much gear is because I really wanted to give them every color on the palette with which to paint their picture.

Being a road person, I can’t buy one of something ’cause you have to have a spare. And then the fact that we have nine rooms here at at Blackbird and we have a rental company, well I need to buy at least ten to feel like, okay, we’re gonna be okay.

Plus, Every time I do it, I think they don’t do this in LA or New York. This is good, you know.

If my only contribution to music is building a place in which someone can make the record that they want to make, I’m fucking happy as could be.
Today on #NerdingOut we are joined by Chuck Ainlay, the 4x Grammy-winning music producer, engineer and mixer (Peter Frampton, Dire Straits, Taylor Swift). Chuck discusses the iconic sound of the Solid State Logic Console, the desk that became famous by mix engineers for its distinctive analogue sound, made popular on some of the biggest hits of the 1980s and early ’90s.

#NerdingOut is where we visit studios around the globe to talk about favorite gear, the plugins that never leave their chain, the tools one would save from a burning building, or the instruments brought to every session.

LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code NERD at checkout.

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There’s something about this console that’s just got this real forward sound.

We’re in Peter Frampton’s studio. We’re in Nashville, Tennessee. You and I have been doing a lot of work together over the past few years. This room just super well maintained. Sounds great. You know, as you can see, it’s got a plethora of gear. This is a solid state logic, or SSL this, it’s really known.

This is the kind of like the desk that sort of made pop music. Famous in the eighties, nineties, early two thousands, and then they came out with the later generations of this. But the idea back then was like, okay, we’re gonna track on a Neve console ’cause it had this big, fat, warm sound. And then we’d mix on an SSL ’cause it had the computer automation and, and had that forward sound.

And the two of them kind of was like that, that hit sound, you know, it’s kind of what I grew up on was SSL’s. I was working at a studio called The Castle. We were located outside of Nashville and we were trying to attract business from Nashville. So we went with sort of the latest technology, which this was at the time.

It’s just what I grew up on, so I feel really comfortable on ’em.
From reaching the coveted number-one spot on Billboard’s Top 100 chart to landing his first ever sync deal, Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum-selling mixing engineer Jeff Braun (Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll, The Band CAMINO, Nelly) reflects on the many #PinchYourself moments he has experienced in his career to date.

Maybe it’s working or jamming with a childhood hero or hearing a vocal that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

This is #PinchYourself. Create your own once-in-a-lifetime moments with an extended one-month trial of LISTENTO, when you use the code PINCH at checkout.

WATCH VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

The first Aldean single that I did was my first number one. That was the first time something I did was on the radio.

I’ve had a couple pinch myself moments. The first one was when I had a mix. It was my very first sink mix that ever landed, and it was a trailer of this. Dragon Age: Inquisitions, Xbox video game. That was the first where it was like, wow, something that I did is actually gonna be seen by more than just like my mom and family or something, you know?

So, so that was pretty cool. Or if you’re in an Uber and then country music’s on the, on the radio, it’s like, That’s when I did. That’s when I did. That’s pretty cool. Anytime like that, that, that’s a pinch myself moment.

My wife’s in artist management and she works with a band called Nightly. We send videos at the speaker, like this Nightly song is playing right now and that’s always a cool thing.

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