Shattered Glass Records

12/04/2024

A little math for you:

This (masterpiece) album was released in 1977, which is generally accepted to be the height of vinyl sales in the US, and this one sold the most. That year there were about 24,400 releases (singles, EPs, LPs, etc), which is a lot of competition.

In 2023, there were about 120,000 releases. Per day. Which means that in 2023, we matched the entire musical output of 1977 on January 1st, at about 5 AM.

When you have a friend who spends their time and money making music, who then is constantly grinding on social media just for a few likes and shares, THIS IS THE REASON WHY. There is just so very much noise out there, and the algorithm is always working against you. You have to scream just to be heard, and even then it’s not a sure thing. But you can help your friend, just by sharing their stuff and encouraging them, because it’s soul-crushing to put everything into something you love and hear crickets.

I tell every artist who comes to me that the only sane way to define success is to make something you love that you’re proud of, because the industry is fickle and random. So that’s what we do. My artists make music they love and are proud of, and I help them record it so that it lasts forever and sounds like them.

It really is the best job.

08/07/2024

You guys might not have seen this, but a while ago I produced my friend Libby Piper Chiaradonna's album of kids music, and it was a blast! I don't know what made me think about it today, but I wanted to share this one (Bedtime for the Birdies) which was one of my favorite songs on it. It's got so much personality and Libby sounds amazing on it. Her harmonies are particularly good. If you've got kids, or know someone who's got kids, check out the whole thing, and also her business where she teaches kids music classes: Ms. Libby's Music Class

08/25/2023

So excited to have this one finally out in the wild! Libby is a great songwriter and artist (and friend!) and this one was a marathon, to say the least. An album for kids is definitely a first, but there’s nothing like having your little ones singing and dancing around while you’re working. Give this one a spin, and if you’ve got friends with kids, pass it around!

Stream and Save Ms. Libby's Music Party! - Distributed by DistroKid

03/31/2023

Tornados in the area but I’m making fish tacos. If I meet the Lord tonight, it will be with a full belly!

03/07/2023

Sometimes getting 5% more efficient means spending a few days dismantling and rebuilding your workspace. It’s the 80/20 rule in the extreme, but if you want that last little percent, there is no other way.

Old setup was good, this one is better. It keeps all of the good parts, incorporates half a dozen little tweaks of things I was constantly doing, and adds an efficient way to give my clients some control over their monitor mix, which is not something you normally see in a project studio. Cable management leaves something to be desired, but the flip side to having the patchbay accessible means any problems can be fixed very easily and none of the cabling is under excess strain. Nothing a few cable ties can’t fix…

02/03/2023

This week for is a pic of my faders. 🤯🤯🤯

For me having k***s and faders really changes the way it feels to do this job. When I’m working remote on a laptop with just a mouse and keyboard, I feel like I’m punching underwater. Having a tool like this x-touch lets me move at the speed of creativity so I’m not stuck thinking. There are a lot of similar pieces of gear, but this one was inexpensive for what it is, and it works with Luna and gets better integrated with every update. 10/10, faders were made for making music and it’s way, way more fun to push these things around.

12/29/2022

The best time to experiment is all the time. Recording some acoustic guitar, using a LDC (F-48 by ) run pretty normally into an LA-2A and an SM57 being blown up by an 1176. Does it suck? ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT.

11/10/2022

To be a breathing human is to be a reflection of your influences.

There’s a studio in the south of France called . The control room has thousands of albums lining the walls, acting as acoustic treatment. Music mixed in that room is literally being influenced by the entire history of recorded music as the sound waves bounce off of album jackets and are absorbed by the vinyl within. Practically speaking, if you’re struggling for inspiration, you can just reach over and pull a record off the shelf and put it on. That instant connection to every person who’s ever done this job before, those who are gone now and those who are still with us, is amazing. I love that.

My studio has records in it. It’s got great literature. Mostly by dead white men as my sister loves to point out, but it’s great art that has influenced civilization for centuries. It all changes the way the room sounds, changes the decisions I make when I’m creating. It also lets me connect with a client when they see their favorite record or a novel they love just sitting around.

Don’t be afraid of your influences. Embrace them. They make you more human, and they might just help you out.

11/07/2022

Do you REALLY know what your tools are doing?

This is something you can do if you have $10,000 worth of outboard gear or if you have nothing but the stock plugins your DAW comes with. Just take a track and print it through different processors doing the same thing to see what you’re plugins or gear are adding, and how that differs from other gear.

Here I’m doing the two stock 1176s, the 1178, the CLA76 in both modes, and my WA76s. Printed a drum loop through each, and then came back later to compare. Made sure they were all compressing about the same, and level matched the output. And they sound different! I’m doing it to learn my 1176s, but if you have two totally different compressors or EQs, etc., you can see how they sound different and that can lead you to use them differently. Super easy and super important to help you grow as an engineer. AND IT’S FREE.

09/22/2022

Often, the crappiest speakers tell the most uncomfortable truths.

09/16/2022

If you really want to know how a mix sounds, you have to play it out in the real world. This does at least two really important things: it changes the listening environment so you hear your mix with fresh ears (in this case, on tiny speakers that most civilians own and use, and pretty much in mono), and it makes you listen with your ears and not your eyes, in a context where you can’t reach out and lower that damn kick drum .75dB while you loop through a 2 bar passage.

For me it’s as easy as air-dropping the mix to my iPhone and going to sit on a comfy couch in another room with just a pen and piece of paper for mix notes. Then I can fix any issues with fresh ears later!

09/12/2022

Everyone who loves music has one.

This is mine. It sounds like a road trip with my best friends to a random city in the Midwest. Chicago, or maybe Indianapolis. Like gin and pizza in a motel room. It sounds like being in love for the first time. It sounds like college heartbreak. It sounds like it was made yesterday, just for me. It’s sounds like it has always been.

A great album anchors you to a point in time. You can put on for the first time in five years and listen to, front to back, and be surprised when it’s over already. Different from just liking it, a great album has depth and grows with you through the years. If you’re a musician, it is the album you keep trying to make, over and over again. This is a great album.

Give Up by The Postal Service is awesome. Give it a listen if you never have before. Ben Gibbard’s writing is at it’s peak, and the production is meticulous, but not over-produced; it’s pulsing with energy and it feels relentless and incredibly urgent, even though it’s older now than I was when I first heard it. It’s the album I’m chasing, in many ways.