Your scope spans teams and your leverage is as a process facilitator and trusted guide through this foggy landscape. When I do what I do they’ll say, “Oh, it doesn’t sound like the rough” and I’ll think, “How am I going to beat a ruff that somebody worked on for a month, in 6 or 7 hours? Your job is to partner with TLs and experts closest to the problem domain and work together to identify the path to the best outcome.

I’d love to say that I always build it from the vocal, but usually what I’ll do is deal with the drums to get them to act like one fader’s worth of stuff instead of 20 or whatever it is.Generally speaking I found it ironic to read about sound in a book format, and I don't think I'll repeat the experience.

With a shelf full of industry awards (seven Grammys, an Emmy, four Surround Music Awards, the Surround Pioneer and Tech Awards Hall Of Fame and too many total award nominations to count) from The Eagles, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Sting, John Fogerty, Van Morrison, Toto, Queen, Faith Hill, Lenny Kravitz, Natalie Cole, the Doobie Brothers, Aerosmith, Phil Collins, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand and many, many others, Elliot has long been recognized for his pristine mixes. Written with special emphasis on today's technology and the evolving marketplace, The Recording Engineer's Handbook Fourth Edition includes a complete overview of recording as it's done by most musicians and producers today in their home studios. We’re becoming so anal and self-analytical and protracted with our views on recording, I think it’s destructive and anti-creative. Principal Engineers' common leverage point is in the friction areas and unrecognized opportunities across teams and products.Since I have owned and operated a recording studio, and worked in many others over the years, I find the advice and information in this book invaluable for my daily projects. If you stare at meters long enough, which is what I did for the first 15 years, you find they don’t mean anything. you can't hear text, so you can't be convinced by the author's advices without taking a long time to try out everything (spoiler, I didn't so it's hard for me to evaluate the book).

For example, your time may be spent on self-directed reviews of design documents and code, engaging with other managers and leaders to help navigate tradeoffs, or leading a deep-dive evaluation of a proposal or product at the request of a Director or VP—you are their trusted technical co-processor. If it’s a guitar then I’ll print the reverb as well on a separate track so the sound is there and locked in. Then, I’ll set the upright bass, the keyboard and the guitar near the drum booth so they all will be able to see and even talk easily to each other. I myself have come across files that have been a hundred and some odd tracks, so it’s not as easy to do that today. The tactics of your engagement style and definition of success depend on the organization and stakeholders you support.After having taught thousands of entrepreneurs the principles of branding and social media in his coaching courses, Bobby has written a number of books outside the music industry including Social Media Promotion for Small Business and Entrepreneurs and The Cruise Vacation FAQ Book. There’s nothing that’s different or blending or making things different, so it’s really kind of simple. There are things that always live in the same place, like channel 24 is always the vocal, so I’m usually figuring out how to lay out everything between the drums and the vocal. You mixed as you went along, therefore, after you got the sounds that would fit with each other, all you had to do is adjust the melodies.

EDDIE KRAMER: I guess I really learned by watching what the other engineers did whilst they were recording, and I sort of adapted their technique in recording my first Jazz groups. After 18 Grammy’s for Best Engineering and work on over 150 gold and platinum records, Al Schmitt needs no introduction to anyone even remotely familiar with the recording industry. No date though certainly early 1920s or earlier (there is a loose sheet inserted from the 1912 Singer almanac). Get a nice 16 track headblock, record at 15 IPS, put Dolby SR on if you desire, then transfer over to Protools. In fact, on some of the Hendrix stuff I used a D30 on the bass drum which I still think is a really great bass drum mic.The role of most Director and VP managers requires that they balance their time across a wide range of teams and initiatives, which gives them breadth but limits their bandwidth and ability to go deep: they may not have the time to do a thorough review of the proposed architecture; dig deep into technical or cross-team product tradeoffs; objectively mediate a gnarly cross-team escalation. On rare occasion if you run into real trouble, maybe you can get away with using a bunch of EQ, but you can fiddle for days making something that was wrong in the first place just different. Use your position and time flexibility to random-walk (domain, function, and level) the organization: keep an ear to the ground and identify hidden gaps and opportunities. As a principal engineer, chances are you have experience with both, but your focus is now less on building the organization (planning, resourcing, managing expectations) and, instead, on improving technical aiming and execution across the organization: helping teams navigate through complex technical, product or organizational tradeoffs, mediating and resolving escalations, and driving technology and process improvements.