My name is Kevin Weber and I am an audio engineer, producer, mixer in Emeryville, California.
I started playing drums when I was thirteen or fourteen and I haven't really put down the drumstick since.
And, I started recording the bands I was working with about ten years ago.
There's tons of great studios in the Bay Area. Lots of great equipment. Lots of you know great rooms.
However, I think the biggest thing is the people and the vibe you pick up in the studio.
And you wanna be comfortable, you wanna almost be at home.
You wanna feel like you are in your living room or in your bedroom.
You do not want to feel like you are going into a hospital or a museum.
Gotta try to make it as welcoming and as comfortable as possible.
So, that's why I tell people to come by. They'll have fun. They'll remember... oh yeah!
Music is supposed to be a fun thing not this stressful, meticulous endeavour, but
something fun and easy and natural that everybody can do. "
"I like it."
(laughter) "Something that I do easily."
(laughter)
"Add that to your Match.com profile."
"What's that called method acting or whatever?"
"Yes." "Stanislavski." (laughter)
"We're rolling."
I use protools at my studios
and uh I use uh variety of plug-ins
that go along with the third party plug-ins.
And, then on the outside in the real world, we have a lot of out board gear.
We have a nice Trident board.
We have an Atari tape machine.
A variety of a compressors and mic breeze
and uh a biblioteca of microphones and instruments.
The list goes on and on. But, uh, I try and do a lot of stuff in the
box and what goes into the computer. I just try to make it sound as good as possible.
So, you aren't sitting there twiddling your software knobs for hours and hours trying to get the sound right.
The transition from being just a musician uh to being on the other
side of the glass, being the engineer not quite as easy as I would have hoped.
But, uh it was fun. It's just a different set of problems. Different set of challenges to face.
Uh, just in terms of the equipment and your uh, skill sets that are required.
My my educational path to where I am now was not a typical one.
I have an undergraduate degree from University of Missouri, Columbia in mechanical engineering.
Uh, then I worked at Lockheed Martin Missiles Space,
built nuclear weapons. I went to Cal had a masters in mechanical engineering focusing
in nanotechnology, worked at Sandia National Labs and now I run a recording studio.
That is not the typical path one has to take to get to where I am now. However, in engineering,
problem-solving mindset has helped. So, although I don't have an audio engineering, uh, degree,
Uh, just having an engineering approach to things I've taught myself a great deal.
"Try now!" (music playing in the background)
"Much better."
"Good." (music playing in the background)
"A little...can we put a little .. can we... there's still a little delay."
"You and your delay."
"Sorry man, can we just run through it again?"
"How 'bout that?"
"Yeah."
Uh, I see sometimes engineers who, uh, go
from high school to a school and they are like "Sweet I wanna record bands!"
But, they don't have that much musical experience.They don't have that network that they can leverage of off.
So they have their experience after schooling and they're like "Sweet! I'm ready to go!"
But they don't, they weren't as active in their social network as they should have been.
So being in a band, first off, helps just because you know a lot of musicians and
the more musicians you know, those are the clients and the customers that are going to
be coming to your studio. Studios are pretty good about letting, uh, people try intern
for them. Where you can at least see what's going on. There's some definitely great schools
and great opportunities out there for you in terms of formal education. But also just
picking up an inbox and Pro Tools and going after it.
Just record yourself, record a band, just dive right in.
Um, I think both those things hand in hand can get you to where you need to be.