WORKING WITH YOUR HEROES
By KESSLER CUFFMAN
We all have very different stories that led us to where we’re at today. Ups, downs, and everything in between. The one thing we all have in common, and can tie to our most core memories, is music. We all have those songs that take us back to a specific time and place like it was yesterday. For me it’s a variety of punk, hardcore, and alternative music. There was something about the hard hitting agression of the musicians and how much energy the music delivered. It was passion filled and that’s what did it for me.
During high school is when I got into the music making process. Back then, producing was not nearly as accessible as it is now. Back then you needed a REAL studio and very expensive analog gear. These were the early days of DIY production. My first interface was a Line 6 POD. Ask any producer from my generation what they started with and more often than not they will say the same thing — the Line 6 POD. Since these were the early days, what we were able to create at home was pretty terrible… like comically bad, BUT we recorded it and had a blast. Creating music that was far below the bar of sub par wasn’t enough for me however. I obsessed over the process different producers followed and what they did to create that signature sound. I tried to crack the code of how they got everything to somehow fit together as one cohesive piece.
YouTube was a brand new platform when I was in high school and vlogs were in their infancy. This is where we were first able to get a true behind-the-scenes look at the studio process. One band that dominated my high school years was called Underoath. While recording one of their albums (I can’t remember which one) they showed a clip from their sessions at a studio called Glow In the Dark Studios located in Atlanta, GA. This was my first introduction to the one and only Matt Goldman. Matt is the guy behind some of my all time favorite bands like Underoath, Anberlin, Cartel, Norma Jean, As Cities Burn etc — all bands that flat out dominated my headphones and probably contributed to some of my hearing loss (gotta listen to harcore music with the volume all the way up!).
So if you know anything about Matt as a producer, then you know that he is known far and wide for the quality sound he gets out of drums. The guy can flat out make drums hit harder and sound fuller than anyone else while still sitting perfectly in the mix. In the Underoath vlog, they were working on tracking drums and it was my first time seeing a studio kit fully mic’d up. It blew my high school mind and I knew right then that my dream drum session would be getting to watch Matt work and take in his process. There were mics everywhere, angled all sorts of ways, with cables all over the floor. Pure chaos, but in the best way.
Back then, the bands weren’t who I cared about meeting, it was the producers. The producers are the people responsible for the songs getting made and they, whether the average listener realizes it or not, are the ones that are responsible for the music that defined so many points of our lives. Fast forward to today and we have the pleasure of working with the man the myth the legend Matt Goldman right here at Dynamo Studios.
It’s really cool seeing this rag tag organization bring people together from all across the industry with the goal of impacting students and the community. Because of Dyanmo, we’ve had the opportunitiy to build relationships with some of the biggest names, labels, and brands in the industry and yesterday, I had the opportunity to watch one of my high school heroes tune and setup our new drum kit. I’ve worked with Matt on loads of sessions over the past few years, but yesterday, a dream I’ve had since high school came to fruition.
Music rules.
Dynamo Studios forever.
