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Issue #47 – Mentor News
by L. Swift and Jeff McQ
When you operate a recording studio that works with lots of clients—ranging from major corporations like Disney and M-Audio, to comedians like Bob Saget and Billy Crystal, to celebrated musical acts like U2 and Justin Bieber—you get to learn a thing or two about studio etiquette.
Recording Connection mentor Steve Catizone’s studio, Sanctum Sound sees many clients just like these on a regular basis—so it comes as little surprise that Steve is particularly passionate on this topic. As he trains his apprentices in the arts of miking, recording and mixing, he also makes sure they understand the proper way to deal with clients that come into his studio. The first few times in the recording studio can get your adrenaline pumping, he says—but he urges his students to remember the rules of the road!
“Don’t be too opinionated when you’re talking to the clients,” says Steve. “Just sort of listen and absorb. See what the climate in the room is, and make sure that if you do say something, it’s tactful.”
In Steve’s mind, allowing the client’s vision to drive the project is an important concept to learn and remember, especially for creative people who can so easily get caught up in the moment. It takes an element of self-discipline. “If you’re a creative person, [if] you create and you write, the minute you start thinking analytically for the first time, you feel like the creativity shuts down,” he says. “It’s only because you’re using the opposite side of your brain. You’ve got your analytic side [and] you’ve got your creative side…So until you learn how to bridge those two together, it’s going to be a minute before you get creative again. That comes with time.”
Another important element to studio etiquette is something Steve refers to as “hang-ability”—simply being a good person to hang around with in the studio. “If people enjoy having you in the room, it’s a big thing,” he says. “A lot of that comes down to personality and basically just being a positive force in the room, and being creative, and knowing when to offer up ideas and how to tactfully do so, and knowing when to not be the guy ‘doing your job’ but just being cool to hang around with.”
Working with clients in the studio day after day, Steve places a high value on the idea of teaching apprentices in the studio one-on-one, because it gives them a better understanding of how the studio really works. “The whole one-on-one situation with people who are in the industry doing things is far better than being in a classroom, being told the general consensus of what everyone needs to learn,” he says. Steve also puts a high premium on helping apprentices work on their own stuff. “We’ve been sitting down with people on the project that they’re working on, that they’re actively curious about, that they’re taking home with them and working on day-to-day, and coming back to us, and we soup it up with them and just give them a lot of food for thought. So they leave excited about going to apply some of the stuff that they’ve learned.”
For others who might be thinking about trying to get involved in the recording industry, Steve’s advice is fairly straightforward: “Just dive in head first,” he says. “I mean, to be great at anything, you need 10,000 hours so you just get the process started. Get in and absorb as much as you can.”
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Camilo Cedeno recently began apprenticing with Steve Catizone at Sanctum Sound. Here’s what he shared with us about his experiences:
“Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my experience with Steve so far. I have had a great time learning with him. Every single week I look forward to learning new things as he is extremely knowledgeable in production, business, and engineering related subjects. He wastes no time when we have our lessons in bombarding me with new information. Even during casual conversation, he lays down knowledge that is valuable to my own creative process as a producer and to my growing knowledge base of engineering.
I feel that he gives me gentle but honest feedback when it comes to the work I have done so far, not simply pretending to like everything I show him.
In the few weeks that I have been working with him, I definitely feel a greater handle on what it will take for me to have a successful career in this business. He has taken much of the scattered knowledge that I have learned on my own and given it structure and flow, where it now makes more sense and serves more as a reliable roadmap.”
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