WCA #519 with Marc Urselli

Marc, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let’s get into the state of the state. Who are you? Where are you and what do you consider yourself? Who am I? Question. The million dollar question that we’re all trying to answer. Right. I’m not going to go to India to look for an answer. Although India was great when I went there.

So for now, I’m going to stick to the answer. That is, I’m a producer and an engineer and a sound designer and somebody who just loves audio and music so much that I’ve decided to make audio and music. My life, my mission. And it’s my 24 over seven companion. I work in a recording studio in two recording studios, actually.

I travel the world mixing live sound, and even after working 10 hours or 12 hours in a studio, I will still go to 1 or 2 concerts every single night in New York City, where I live primarily, and that is my life, and I’ve chosen it, and I’m very happy with it. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?

I was born in Switzerland. I was there for like eight years. Then my family moved to Italy, where I lived until I was 20, 21. When I was 17, I opened my first recording studio and my parents basement with their blessing and their help. And that’s how I cut my teeth recording punk and hardcore bands during the day. The studio was right below my parents bedroom, so I couldn’t work at night, but I did plenty of great records back then in the in the mid late 90s, between 95 and 99.

So something like that. And then I went to New York initially for an internship, because I wanted to see what it is like to record other genres that I didn’t have the opportunity to record in my studio in Italy, just because there wasn’t anything like that in the scene, like jazz, experimental jazz, classical music, it was all like it was mostly 90% punk.

hardcore. And I went to EastSide Sound, the oldest recording studio in New York, opened since 1968, and I started an internship there pouring coffee, making coffee, cleaning toilets, being a runner. And I worked my way up, you know, at some point in those years as an intern, I spent two years as an unpaid intern. I realized New York was the place I kind of became gradually more obvious.

And so I decided I would do whatever it takes to stay. Fast forward almost 30 years later, I’m in New York with my own studio called Audio Confidential, which I opened last year, and I’m still the chief engineer at EastSide Sound, so I worked my way up through the ranks there. Let’s hyper focus a little bit on those early days before you came to New York, when was your first awareness of audio production and when did you start to look at records and, you know, look at the credits and ask yourself, what is a producer do?

What is an engineer and how is this all put together? Good question. I don’t know. When I started looking at credits, I was looking. I guess the answer to that is when I was 15, it was the era of cassettes, and so I didn’t really have access to credits because I didn’t have a turntable to have physical records to look at credits.

So a lot of my early music exposure was through exchanging cassettes with friends, making ourselves mixtapes. So credits were not a part of the equation, but music was very heavily a part of my of the equation back there. Back then. A lot of the discovery process today would be through algorithms and playlists and whatever. The discovery algorithm that DSPs have accustomed us to was back then.

One person saying to the next, you should check out I made you a mixtape of my favorite, you know, songs from these favorite 15 records that I’ve bought. And so a lot of discovery was like that. Recommendations, talking word of mouth, mixtapes, cassettes, etc. at some point in that time I forget exactly the year, but my mom, who’s very heavily into classical music, was the one that had a turntable and was the one that decided to buy a compact disc player, and she gave me she gave me some money to go buy a CD so we could test out this new technology of the stereo she just bought.

I came back with Guns N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction, which very much displeased her. And and then after, after she didn’t talk to me for a day or two, she. I convinced her to give me more money for a second chance. And I bought Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. So those were my first two CDs. And then from there on, now, you know, I have like 5000 CDs later and eventually I started with vinyl, etc., etc. but to circle back and answered your two part question at some point, and I forget the exact year, but I would say it would have been 96 or 97.

I was playing in bands as a keyboard player, and I was going to a recording studio an hour away to record demos with this band. The studio was called Pure Rock Studios in a town called Brindisi in southern Italy. Puglia. And I really loved the process, and that’s when it clicked in me that this is something I really would love to do.

And then I became friends with the engineer there, who later contacted me and asked me if I knew anyone who would want to buy that. His mixing console, which is very large format analog console. And that’s when he clicked for me overnight. I was like, I’m the guy that’s going to buy the console and I’m going to make this my life.

And that’s where that’s when it happened. Really talk to me about the creation of a studio in your parent’s home. What did you think versus what was reality and what ended up happening with that? That’s how I did it the right way, actually. Meaning my parents were kind enough to help me financially to buy construction materials, and I enlisted the help of friends to build a room within a room.

Under the advice of this guy that I mentioned in Brindisi, who had this studio who had built 1 or 2 studios before. So he had knowledge of how to do it. So he, you know, I did a lot of reading. This was pre-internet era, no YouTube videos to consult, but a lot of books. And I read about, you know, how to build a studio, the room within the room, the acoustics, all of that.

And I put everything in. I basically built everything myself. A bunch of wood, sheetrock, rock wall. So yeah, I did a floated floor, dropped ceilings, everything was done properly to the point where the local hardware store guy at some point, like, what are you building like Tom Waits, you know, what’s he building down there. Building in there. Yeah.

And he he literally asked me if he could come over and check out what I was doing, because I kept going to the hardware store every day for like, two months. You know, he came over, he was very impressed. And. Yeah. So I built everything the proper way so that I could make noise while my parents were living upstairs.

And I operated that studio for three, two, three, four years until I realized I needed to get out to have different experiences. What was your takeaway from that? That studio experience in terms of business, working with bands, what are the what are the great lessons that came from that experience? I mean, I’ve learned so much. It was a learning experience.

You know, I remember figuring out how a compressor works and having that moment when it went from theory on the book to like, this is what the threshold does, and this is what the ratio does. And like hearing it in the studio, you know, and of course, it was the days of analog tape. So I was cutting through an analog console onto a, onto analog tape.

And, you know, there was a lot of learning process in that. I didn’t do much cutting of tape at the time, but I was already starting to mess with automation. And yeah, so, you know, it was a very a moment of time that was ripe with learning, which, you know, held helped me throughout the rest of my life.

Being a parent myself, having your kid leave is is a big deal. So talk about the process of making that decision, talking to your parents about it, and and figuring out how to land in New York without, you know, stumbling too much. Well, my parents are amazing. They’ve been very supportive. So when I said, I think I need to go to New York or I think I need to leave, they were they were all for it.

And never there was never a like, why, why? Or you shouldn’t go anything like that. They’re like, whatever makes you happy, you know, whatever you think is right. I mean, I remember that originally my idea was to go to an audio school in Milan, SAE, which we have, you know, they exist all over the world. There was a location in Italy, maybe it’s still there.

And I was thinking I wanted to learn more, and I needed to just spread my wings and broaden my horizons. And I remember that I had the conversation with them, and they couldn’t really afford the tuition for that school or sending me to Milan to live, you know. So then I knew this guy that was working in New York.

We were pen friends. He was. I sent him some recordings. He was impressed with the recordings, and he said, I can’t promise you anything, but if you want to come here, I can at least get you an unpaid internship. So my decision wasn’t to move to New York. My decision, that’s how I. That’s what I told my parents.

My decision was I’m going to go to New York to check it out and do an unpaid internship for three months and then come back and those three months turned into another three months and another three, until it became obvious to me that this was the place where I wanted to live. During that time, I’d been attempted to sublet my recording studio to a bunch of friends that were going to continue keeping it operational, and that didn’t quite work out.

But the point is, I didn’t close the studio when I went to New York because I thought I was going to go back to Italy. I closed the studio like two years later, when it was obvious to me that New York was the place. I want to highlight something to the younger audience that that Marc just said, and that is pen friends.

Many people who are younger going to be like, what the hell is a pen friend? Well, obviously in the days before the internet, we wrote to each other with pen and paper or pencil and paper and sent tape and things in the mail, and that was our internet. Yeah, exactly. Landing in New York. Talk a little bit about those first few months and what were your impressions?

Had you been to America before? I hadn’t even been on a plane before. That was the first plane I got on. I had, you know, I grew up in Switzerland and I’d been to some neighboring countries in like France or Germany or whatnot by train, but never had been on a plane. So I literally got on this plane, got off to New York without knowing a single person.

I had another pen friend who had a record label because, you know, there’s a lot of things going on. At the same time, at this stage of my life, one of the things was that I was running a music magazine, which I started in 1994, which at the time was on paper. Now it still exists and it’s on online.

At the time it was a fanzine that I ran that I started in 1994 was called Chain DLK. Today it’s Chain D.L.K., and I had a lot of contacts by pen mail with record labels and musicians. One of these people had a record label in New Jersey, I think it was called 80 tapes or something like that, and we had become pen friends and he said, I’ll come pick you up since you’ve never been and you know, and you can stay on my couch until you find a place to stay.

So he was very kind. He picked me up at JFK. I remember watching, you know, the tall building of Manhattan for the first time in my life. It was very surreal. It was very also, it was October 31st, coming up soon, in ten days from now. And so and what that meant was a lot of Halloween, you know, stuff like whatever stuff around houses.

So very it was very surreal. And we drove through Manhattan, went to New Jersey, and I crashed on his couch for 12 days. While I was while I was looking at magazine, you know, newspapers, looking for an apartment until I found 112 days later. Amazing. I just I’m envisioning you coming out of JFK and then, you know, making the way in and just.

Oh, yeah, your brain just opening up. Absolutely. Mind blown for sure. You know, especially when you’re that young and impressionable. I was 20, I believe it was. It was surreal. It was crazy. It was, but it was life changing. But it was the best decision I’d made in my life, for sure. I talked to a lot of producers and engineers who started out playing an instrument, and their initial plan was to be, you know, a rock star, quote unquote, discharged.

Okay. And same for me. But then you discover audio and everything changes. Can you talk a little bit about once you arrived in New York, what was the plan once you got to New York in your brain? And 20. Well, when I got to New York, the plan was to learn as much as I could from the experience in New York and then move back to Europe and closed shop in southern Italy and opened a bigger recording studio, either in northern Italy or in Switzerland.

That was the plan. And then, like I said, life happens. And I realized New York is way cooler than this other plan. I should make a new plan. And it was. It wasn’t like an moment from one day to the next. It was a progressive realization that New York was was my home was the place to be.

Audio had already taken over my life. That process of going from wanting to be a rock star to realizing engineer is much cooler happened before I moved to New York, because I was a keyboard player in various black metal, rock and funk bands when I was 15 or 16. And then I opened the studio when I was 17, and it had already become clear to me that the rock star thing wasn’t the plan.

The real plan was becoming an engineer, and part of what it was for me, actually, was the fact that I always loved multiple genres of music. To this day, I listened to rock, pop, electronic music, you know, goth, metal, jazz, classical music. I listened to so many genres of music that even back then, I couldn’t really decide what I wanted to become a rock star in because I was playing in a black metal where they painted their faces and I played keyboards.

I was swaying in a funk band where we were doing Stevie Wonder’s covers. I was playing in a rock crossover band that was my own band called General Store. So even back then, as a musician, I couldn’t quite define the path because I didn’t want to take one musical path. So the engineer option was the option that allowed me to work on multiple genres and to not have to be like, I’m going to go in this direction.

I can have a broad open spectrum and record multiple genres, and that really fit my desire for variety. Your internship, making coffee, cleaning toilets, being a runner. Tell me again, what studio was that? That was that EastSide Sound, which I’m still chief engineer at today. All the studio in New York opened by Lou Holtzman in 1968 and acquired by Andres Pollock about four years ago.

So now it’s changed hands. Although the original owner, Lou, in his 70s, lives upstairs and still engineers, and I still engineer there as a chief engineer. We’re just putting in an Atmos system this week, so it’s a studio that’s in constant evolution and improvement. It’s a great, fantastic place, and I love working there. Even though last year I opened my own studio just because I wanted to have a place where I could focus more on producing records and doing things I wanted to.

What were the early challenges for you and EastSide Sound and getting settled in New York? New York’s an expensive place. Was it a bit of a struggle? Did you have a little parental support? It was a huge struggle, and I had no parental support, not because my parents didn’t want to be supportive, because I had decided this was I was 20 now 21, and I decided it was no more.

You know, the time to ask for money at home was over. I didn’t want to be a burden on my parents. So I left with savings and I went to New York, and I spent two years as an unpaid intern, living very cheaply in a basement apartment in New Jersey that would flood every time it rained, which meant I slept on a inflatable mattress that I bought from Walmart for 15 bucks.

And so every time there was rain, the basement would flood with like an inch of water. My mattress would float, and that’s all I could afford, because I didn’t want to ask for money at home and for my, you know, rent, which at the time was in this basement apartment, was $250. So for New York, that’s like mind blowingly cheap.

At the time, I was doing web design because this was 1999, 2000. So it it was the beginning of the internet. Everyone was being told they needed a website. And so I took advantage of that. Taught myself web design, HTML, CSS, flash at the time. And I was going around places asking places in Italy because Italy was lagging a little bit behind the US in terms of internet acquisition.

So I was going around the town where I lived and to the stores and be like, hey, this there’s this thing called the internet. You need a web presence. I can do it for you. And so from New York, I was designing websites for these people and, and getting paid to do so. And that’s how I sustain myself for two years being an unpaid intern.

I love the resourcefulness and just the breadth of things that you can do and your willingness to dig in and do them, to do whatever you have to when you want, when you see the path, you gotta, you gotta walk the path. And if the path is uphill, you just, you know, buckle up and do it. You find ways to do it.

You have to be resourceful. And, you know, unless you’re you’re rich and you have a full bank account, you got to have to find ways to sustain yourself. And that’s that’s what I did. And it helped me a lot also later on, because to this day, you know, 20, 30 years later, I’m still managing my own websites, designing my own websites that redesign my website.

I market myself. Like a year ago, people were impressed by the things I did. I run that music magazine still, which is online. So the web design thing that I learned back then to support myself has really become very useful. Being self-reliant, I’m sure, is something that you really just grew into in that time in New York as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. New York changes you forever. It’s a very hard city to live in, but it’s a city that gives back a ton. Yeah, it’s. Yeah, if you put the time in. Right. Exactly. Talk to me about the new studio and the decision to do that when I mean, you had access to EastSide Sound. So it begs the question for me why?

Why put the money in effort into a new space? It’s a very, very good question. And I asked myself that for a long time. And I kind of procrastinated for a long time because it was in the back of my head for a long time. And but I always said to myself, you know, I had a studio when I was 17 and I at the time it was my parents basement, so I didn’t have to pay rent.

Why would I have to pay? Want to pay? Why would I want to pay rent in New York City for my own recording studio? It makes no sense. I got it, I found there were two major factors in that decision. One was the fact that in the last ten years, I’ve been moving gradually from being just an engineer to being a producer and an engineer, and I wanted to produce records and artists that often couldn’t afford these sites.

Out on the EastSide Sound is a fantastic recording studio, but it is expensive because it’s one of the biggest studios in New York and one of the oldest. And the other factor was that when the studio was acquired four years ago by Anders Pollack, as I mentioned, he decided that he wanted to get a new console, which was a Harrison 32Classic, Harrison now being owned by SSL.

He bought that console maybe a year into his ownership of EastSide and and what was that, EastSide? I didn’t say that earlier, but there was a Neve Genesis that I had bought, used and brought back to life, spending a lot of money on maintenance. So I was using the Neve Genesis, but the new owner decided he wanted to put in the Harrison console, a choice I didn’t necessarily agree with, but the point being is that my Neve Genesis went into storage and I hated the idea of owning a Neve and having it sit in storage, and that’s that was the final push.

I needed to do my own thing. So the new studio opened in July of 2025. After about six months of construction. I signed the lease January 1st to 2025. It’s called Audio Confidential. It’s in Chelsea, New York on 29th Street. Great location, couple blocks away from Madison Square Garden. Very accessible. I opened it with a business partner who’s also an engineer who is looking for a space.

It’s great. I’m very happy with it. My Neve Genesis is there. My half of my collection of microphones is there, the other half being at EastSide Sound. I have a huge my collection of over 300 mics, and in the years I had accumulated so much gear, amps, keys, speakers, you know, some outboard that basically at EastSide.

Sorry. At Audio Confidential, I have a beautiful setup that’s analog except for Pro Tools and has a live room with a piano, a drum booth, a vocal booth, and an ISO cab. So it’s a smaller and all rooms communicate visually. So it’s a smaller version of EastSide Sound, which has six ISO booths and a library. And so now I’m in and it’s and because it’s smaller I can rent it out for cheaper.

And as a result of that I now can offer every artist two options. We can go to EastSide Sound for this much money, or we can go to Audio Confidential for this much money, Audio Confidential will be smaller, doesn’t have a lounge you can lounge in between takes. EastSide Sound has a bigger and better piano, so you know there’s different factors that will allow an artist to decide what they want to do.

And I can go to either or, and it’s good to have options also, you know, so you’ve got this, this studio experience that you’ve been building on for for many, many years. But you also do live sound. Correct. Live sound for many in the world is is it’s a prolific work. There’s just there’s always a show going on in some towns somewhere.

Talk about the decision to do live sound and how come you haven’t just focused on on the studio? Is it is it to diversify income streams? It wasn’t that thought out. It was actually, funnily enough, it was a byproduct of ignorance. Meaning when I was 17 and I was starting to, you know, be known in my little town in Italy as the guy that’s opening a studio.

I also started getting calls from PA rental companies that were like, hey, we’re doing the show. And we did an engineer. And I was like, you know, I’m sure I can do it. It’s it’s a mixer, you know, I’ll figure it out. And, you know, also, I was in little punk and hardcore clubs. I was helping bands set up and doing their sound check.

So when I say it was a byproduct of ignorance, I mean, today we know that there are two very separate career paths at the time. My ignorance and that of the people calling me were where we were all under the assumption that audio is if you’re a mixing engineer, you can mix in a studio and you can mix live.

I know now that’s not true, but because of the assumption that back then that they were similar, I just ended up doing both. So I never thought about diversifying income streams, although it’s been a great asset in my in my life that diversification. But I just gradually learned both things and kept improving in both things. And I keep to this day, doing both things right is the spice of life, and I love writing musical genres, and I love variety in the type of work.

So I go from recording or mixing in a studio to mixing a live show, to doing sound design for an opera or a theater. To me, they’re all part of the same language. Let’s say they’re different accents of the same language. It’s interesting just to follow you on social media and just see the sheer amount of variety and travel.

We made an attempt to do this interview from a hotel room in Mexico, and here you are back in New York for for this time, and I’m leaving in four hours to go to Germany. So and you’ve highlighted my point, really, I want to talk a little bit about like what is in your head about scheduling and time management and what gigs to take and what gigs not to take.

Like what does it look like from your perspective? Well, if you look at my calendar, it looks like a confetti explosion with all the different, you know, colored boxes I use for different colors for studio bookings, live sound bookings, concerts I’m going to see as an audience member and personal things. So there’s at least four colors in my calendar and it literally looks like a confetti explosion.

I always say that the biggest challenge in my life is playing Tetris with my calendar, and it really feels like that. I do prioritize work, and I try to fit it wherever I can, and I try to have a personal life and go to as many concerts and events, cultural events as I can. So, you know, as you just said, I was in Mexico until three days ago, I came back to New York for two nights.

I had three sessions in those two nights in New York, and later today, two hours after this interview, I’ll be heading to the airport to go to Germany to teach some master classes in Germany, and then and attend the conference, and then go to Italy and mix a live show there, and then come back to New York for one night during that one night, by the way, I’m going to see a concert because it’s the only day that this band is playing Neurosis.

They haven’t played in many years. They’re playing in New York that one night that I’m spending here, so I’ll be jet lagged. But going to that show and the next morning I’ll be going to AES in Nashville and then to LA for a ten day session at the Village. And today is October 21st. The next time I’ll see my bed.

Other than that, one night in New York will be November 11th. So it’s funny, we’re both going to AES in Nashville, but you’re doing more activity, more variety of activity between now and AES than I am, because all I’m doing is putting together a couple Atmos records and that’s, you know, that’s the extent of my involvement between now and AES, but well, there’s, you know, touches on I mean, I if I was in New York I’d be putting together records for sure.

But yeah, it’s just, you know, I just launched my own microphone. So that’s why I’m going to AES. I’m doing a presentation November 1st about that microphone and AES Nashville is halfway between New York and LA. So it’s perfect for me to then go to LA and work on this album. So I’m sure everybody in the audience is asking the same thing that I’m about to ask.

And that is, when do you sleep and how do you deal with traveling at the rate that you do, working at the rate that you do can be challenging to your sleep. So let’s talk about your diet and sleep. Are you disciplined person when it comes to sleep and diet? No, not at all. I eat whatever I please, luckily.

I mean, I try not to eat junk food and I definitely I’ve never been in my whole life to McDonald’s. Let me put it that way. I don’t eat junk food. I try to eat healthy, but I do eat out all the time. So it’s never as healthy as if as if you were cooking your own meals. I’m sure there’s room for improvement in my diet, without a doubt.

Sleep wise, sleep wise, I just sleep. I try to, you know, get 6 to 7 hours every night and for the most part, I’m able to do so. But obviously jet lag is is a part of my life. So there’s nothing you can do about that. You know, I’ll be in Germany tomorrow morning and I’ll be tired as hell going to do opening ceremony of a new punk museum in Dusseldorf at noon after I land at ten.

And then I’ll try to get a couple of hours in after that opening and try to get into the new time zone as soon as possible. Usually takes me 2 or 3 days. Do you have a manager? I don’t have a manager. I’ve self-managed. I’ve looked into having a manager. I’ve just never found the right person. I’d love to get one if anyone’s out there listening, hit me up.

But I haven’t found the right person yet. There’s only one person I liked so far as a manager, and after we had a meeting, and that’s Jody Ambrosio, who’s a great guy and a great, great manager. We’ve had a couple meetings and after we had the last meeting, he he kind of said to me, you don’t need me, you’re doing fine.

So I don’t know. Can you talk a little bit about self-management productivity. How do you you know, you mentioned the the colored calendar, color coding, the activities. I would love to hear. What are your little tips and tricks that you do for, you know, just keeping yourself organized. Like I texted you about this interview and like, boom, you texted me right the hell back.

And I thought, God, I know this guy’s super busy. That’s that’s crazy. He’s just on it. I’m on it. You’re right. And I’m also very organized. Maybe that’s because I was born in Switzerland and I have a Swiss parent. And, you know, Swiss people are organized. We can’t help it. I don’t really know how to answer that question.

I mean, it’s I’m just organized and I on top of my shit, and I it’s I don’t like people not answering to text messages or email. So I make it a point to always answer as quickly as I can. I check my email multiple times a day, and my morning routine is kind of like having an espresso and checking my email.

That’s the only routine in my life. Everything else changes, and even that routine changes when I’m traveling. But if I’m home, I’ll have a make an espresso and check my email. And whenever you text me, unless I’m in the middle of something, or a concert or mixing a concert or whatever, I will answer whoever, whenever, as quickly as I can.

I’m just. I’m just on it. I’m like, I like to be on it. I like to be focused on what I do, and I like to put the right amount of attention into the things that I do. And how do you filter out the noise? Because, you know, I’m sure you get it just as much as I do.

Like, I constantly am getting stuff in my inbox or I’m just like, forget that. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the inbox is crazy. You know, we train our spam filters every day. I’m clicking that report spam block thing all the time. But I mean, the the noise, the email noise is one thing. You just train your spam filters. The rest is just a it’s it’s a matter of you picking what’s what matters to you.

And I just choose what matters to me based on whatever my priorities are. You know, yesterday, in those two days that I spent in New York, I had a session, I had three sessions and and then at night I went to see a concert. I could have gone home, but if I had gone home, I would have just probably gotten on the computer and worked.

And I still did that in the end. But but the point I’m making is like my priority was in these two days that I had in New York. Between travel, I wanted to see some people. There’s a festival called Unsound that’s happening now, and I knew that if I didn’t go yesterday, I wouldn’t have seen the people from Unsound and the musician Raphael that was playing yesterday night.

And so for me, that’s a priority, reconnecting with people in all of this. It’s the people’s business. And human relationships are more important than anything. So for, you know, it’s for me, it’s important to see my friends and go, go say hello to these people that I would otherwise missed in this case because of my travel. Okay, so it’s super.

I could see the ease. You know, if you get into the mindset of, you know, getting a variety of work, saying yes to to to opportunities, what about the follow up and the business end of it, of the money of making sure that, you know, let’s say a week goes by and, you know, you’ve been to 2 or 3 different countries, your jet lagged, you’re tired, you’re on your way to a concert and you realize, you know what, I didn’t get paid yet from that gig a week ago.

How how are you handling that? How are you managing that? Staying on top of making sure that you’re always getting paid? I’m just organized. So, you know, I take notes. I have I have an invoicing software that I use. And so when I issue an invoice for something, it shows whether it’s paid or not. And so I just I just check back, you know, whenever I issue the next invoice, I check if there’s any outstanding ones.

And if they are, they’ve been outstanding for a minute. I email that company or person and remind them of that. So if there’s not really a routine, there’s not a day of the week where I do accounting, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s just like, I’m just paying attention. I’m just focused. I’m just there’s not a system, there’s just a systematic checking of things.

Just constantly be sending those invoices. And that’s kind of your check and balance of whether or not you’ve been paid. Yeah, I mean, I, I send like, you know, yesterday night I sent an invoice out for the session that I did at the studio earlier in the day. And as I did when I did that, I’m in front of my invoice software and I look at what what outstanding invoices.

There are a quick glance and I see what’s if something hasn’t gotten paid, you know, and then you have to remember to mark something as paid when you do receive the payment. So, you know, sometimes things, you know, I’m not lying, sometimes you forget something, but, you know, eventually it’ll come to the service and you’ll deal with it.

When it comes to negotiating the rate that that you’re asking for. How do you handle that? How do you how do you decide when it’s going to be a gig that you’ll take for less than you normally would? Great question. Jojo Mayer a fantastic drum, drum and bass drummer, live drummer, a friend of mine. We had dinner once and I asked him this same question.

We were talking about this and rates and stuff and and he told me I used the rule of the three M’s, and I loved that rule, and I had adopted it and use it to this day, the rule of the three M’s is music, money and mates, and at least two of them need to exist for you to take the gig.

So if the money is not there, but they’re your friends and the music is really cool, then I’ll take it. But if it’s only one of the three, then I won’t take it, I like it. Pick two and take the gig. Yeah, two of the three need to exist. Okay, so many times you’re you’re dealing with new, new clients.

So the mates that’s that’s taken off the plate. Exactly. It needs to be, you know, good music and not, not well paid, but at least my rate. Yeah. What is your philosophy about money management as an audio professional? You know, there’s there’s so many temptations to buy gear that is constantly being flashed in front of our face. It’s easy to, you know, go into debt over that gear.

How do you look at your money and and surviving and sustaining? Well, I have enough gear in my life. I don’t need more gear. Although I do keep getting more gear somehow. But I try to remind myself that I have enough gear, especially microphones. You know, my collection, like I said, is 300 and over microphones. So I tried to remind when I want to.

When I see a mic I want, I try to remind myself, you have enough mics. Yeah. I mean, I just, I just ask myself if I really need something before I buy it. That’s really the the answer in terms of, you know, relationships, a significant other or family or any of that, you’re kind of living the studio rat life, but you’re also living almost the touring musician life with all the live sound stuff.

So is it difficult to maintain relationships for you? It it has its challenges, but I manage, you know, I try to be present in the life of my friends. I try to stay in touch with all my friends. I do have a partner who is a musician and therefore understands the lifestyle and and she lives in the UK, so we have a long distance relationship and that works because we both travel so much and we see each other.

Whenever I’m in Europe on a gig, she comes to visit me. So you know, next, next week I’m going to Germany. After that I’m going to Italy for to mix a live show, and she’s going to come and meet me in Italy and we’ll have a couple of days together there. So. So I would assume that being, you know, being born in Switzerland and raised in Italy or, you know, I’m not sure how much time you spent in each, but you probably speak a few languages.

Yeah, I speak three, at least three languages, Italian and English. Fluid. German. So-so, because I left when I was eight years old. Swiss. German so-so. So if you want to count that, it’s four. And I definitely, I can definitely get around with Spanish, although I’ve never taken a single lesson. But you know, I just spent three weeks mixing shows in Mexico.

So my Spanish is is is there’s some Spanish there. Let’s put it out. Well, and I guess there’s a loose connection there between, you know, Italian. Yeah. Closer relationship. They are very, very similar. Which is why my understanding of Spanish is much greater than my ability to speak. So before we wrap up, let me ask you this. There are a couple of different angles to this.

Where do you think you’re doing well and where do you think you have room for improvement in how you’re running your audio world? I mean, there’s always room for improvement. Life is a never ending lesson to be learned, you know, to learn. So I always try to remind myself, and I’m always learning something new on every gig, you know?

So I just I mean, I’m happy with, with my life, with the variety that exists in my life, with the with my freedom to travel and explore. I’m I’m happy with that. There’s always room for improvement, but the improvement is more like in the type of gigs that you get or do in the, you know, in the in the teachings that you acquire throughout life and that you can apply.

So it’s, it’s, it’s more of a holistic thing than one specific area, I think. Travel tips for the audio professional. You travel a hell of a lot. So can you talk about like how do you travel? I travel super light. I’m always with one carry on. I don’t check bags unless I really have to, and if I do, it’s usually to carry gear.

Not close. So, you know, I always pack for, you know, ten days. And if the trip is longer than ten days, then I do laundry at the hotel or wherever. I am not packing, you know, a large suitcase and having only the carry on means getting in and out of airports much quicker. Which is key. I try to maximize my time in the lounge so I can keep working in a quiet space.

Get a meal in before traveling. That’s better than airline food. Take melatonin. When I learned to adapt to the jet lag as quickly as possible, or remove the jet lag. So I should say adapt to the new time zone. That’s really it. I mean, I don’t really have any any particular I’m tall, so I’m always uncomfortable in planes and unable to sleep.

So, you know, I’m tonight I’m flying to London and connecting to Germany, and I know I won’t be able to sleep because my flight is at 5:30 p.m., which means I’ll be landing in London at local time, 5 a.m. but in New York time, that will only be like midnight, which is not even close to when I even go to sleep.

I go to sleep around 1 or 2 a.m., so I know I won’t be sleeping on that flight and I’ll be missing an entire night. So when I get to Germany, I’ll try to get a couple of hours in if I can. The lounge thing is, is a real key component for those of listeners that maybe if you travel on, say, delta for, for example, and you have an Amex those are tools that can really aid in your travel.

I don’t know if you agree with that, Marc, but. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the last thing I want is to sit in a, in a, you know, in a gate area with screaming children for two hours waiting for a flight. So, you know, the quieter the area and the better the food, the better will be your, your stay in the airport.

Yeah. Those are those little kind of comfort creature, comfort type travel things I find are important. Going to a Delta lounge all over the US has been just such high value. Because you can eat till your, you know, your content. Coffee’s really good. It’s quiet, there’s a supportive kind of environment to just set your laptop up, put on headphones and get stuff done and you’re not challenged by everything.

So if that’s my and that’s not very working class, but it’s at the same time it kind of is. It’s it’s a working class. It is working class. It’s you know, we’re like at the airport going to a gig and doing getting work done at the, at the airport. That’s as working class as it gets. That’s. Yeah, that is true.

Well Marc great. Great to chat with you. I will see you at AES in Nashville. Looking forward to that. And I’d love to check out your your new mic. And maybe there’s come November. November 1st at 1 p.m. at AES, I’m doing this presentation talking about microphones and how I’ve come from collecting microphones to designing a microphone, which is the first ever world’s first large diaphragm condenser, plus ribbon in one body with two separate outputs that are phase coherent and level matched.

And you’re doing that in conjunction with who? I designed the microphone and I’m producing it with JZ Microphones, a great company in Latvia that I’ve, that I’ve been using for years. I love their Black Hole condenser mic. And so when I came up with this design, I asked them whether they would be able to manufacture my design. I sent them the prototype, which I had built with a friend from Italy, and they loved the idea and they produced the first 100, which sold out before the mic was even sold.

Like meaning sorry before the mic even shipped the in preorder. The first 100 sold out, so that’s a great success. People really understand the value, the idea, and the value of having those two types of microphones in one body, which is really unique because I’ve been recording with condenser and ribbons for my whole career at this point, you know.

Yeah. Having them in one mic is really super helpful. I’m a fan. I have a couple Vintage 11s and Vintage 67s from JZ. Very fond of them. Yeah. Are there any problems having the ribbon and the magnet from the ribbon right next to the the capsule of the condenser, or are they in separate chambers there? No, they’re in the same chamber.

They’re basically as close as you can get them, which is closer that you can never get a ribbon in a large diaphragm condenser that are in separate bodies. And that’s the whole point when you can get those two elements as close together as like, you know, they’re like one millimeter apart, one eighth of an inch or 1/16 of an inch apart.

That means you can achieve phase coherence, which you can, you know, not really achieve with two separate microphones. And then of course, their level match the two. The the ribbon is an active circuitry, sort of as if it had a Cloudlifter inside, so to speak. So both take phantom so you don’t risk putting phantom on the wrong one.

And because of that, their level matched means you put your two preamps at the same level. And between 200 and 2 K you’ll have the same output and you get two tonalities from the same microphone. Of course, that’s that’s the that’s the main, so to speak, advantage is that you have those two colors, the darker ribbon with richer low end, creamier top end, and the brighter and more detailed condenser sparkly at top, etc., etc. when you mix those two to well, you can choose to use only one or the other.

Of course, but when you mix those together, you have a whole world of sonic possibilities and a lot of other tricks that you can do. For example, you can you can put a de-esser on the condenser. If you have a singer with a lot of sibilance, and you can be aggressive on that. Yes. Because even if the sound of the condenser ducks, you still have the ribbon that keeps the full body image of the sound very present.

So it doesn’t feel like this. The signal is ducking. You can do that with an acoustic guitar where you have a lot of fret noise, things like that. Or, you know, when I put two of those on overheads, on drum overheads, I can compress the figure eight ribbon mics heavily and leave the condensers uncompressed. So I have a parallel compression going on basically.

And, and I can choose how much of the room to blend into the signal, because obviously the figure eight of the of the condensers will be sorry of the ribbons will be will have more of the ceiling reflections and therefore more of the room sound than the condenser, which is cardioid. There’s a lot of possibilities. Positions are fixed.

You can’t move them, right. You can’t move