Especially early on, I had no idea what I was going to be asked to do when I walked into a studio. I was doing 26 sessions a week - all day, all night.
I started off as a recording engineer and a beatmaker. I was this skater kid that would skateboard to auditions, and then I would use the money I'd make and buy a bunch of equipment and make a bunch of beats. I still am that kid, just with a little more money.
Atlantic's Jerry Wexler believes first-rate records are made by first-rate voices. He certainly has worked with enough of them: Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, La Vern Baker, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.
People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas.
The thing people forget about Kevin Shirley a lot of the time is that he's not only a great producer, he's also a world-class engineer. He really knows how to get a sound.
My profession is called record production.
I think the whole '2112' album took somewhere around a week to do.
Alex Tumay is a recording engineer who works a lot with Young Thug and a load of other rappers, like Quavo. I'm just a fan of his work.
Bobby is really the one who did all the editing on that stuff. And he did all the mixing. I particularly like the record we did with Logic because Scott Harding did a great job mixing it. He's really a killing engineer.
As a recording engineer - someone who is deeply embroiled in the process of making records every day - you see trends and fads run through the social organization of the population of musicians in the same way that they would run through a high school.
My first CD started as a studio project and I record everything with one other guy, so I didn't have a band. That's kind of how I like to do it, though. I like to create it with one other person, this guy, Tommy English, who produces everything. And then I go out on the road with a band who interprets it live.
Phil Ramone is very special. Barbra Streisand or Diana Ross... they are the best.
I do have electric guitars, because I've always believed, especially when I'm working in the studio with other bands as producer, that there should be a really nice Strat around.
Dre's from Compton, I'm from Brooklyn, and we both wanted to make a better life for ourselves, right? And we both - somehow, we're both recording engineers, that's how we got our break.
I'm very influenced by the work of George Martin and the string arrangements that he did for the Beatles.
I think it goes back to me being a recording mixer and engineer. Because of all the technology now you can make music yourself and a lot of people are doing that now. I started out doing that a long time ago and I found when I did that I came up with a unique sound.
Recording 'Tusk' was quite absurd. The studio contract rider for refreshments was like a telephone directory.
The touring life wasn't for me. I like to wake up in the same place most days. And I'm really into sitting behind a mixing console and listening to music all night and making music all night. I'm a studio rat.
Duncan Aldrich has been my partner in most recording projects, and touring projects, for the past decade.
When you have to put on shades in the studio, you know you have to stop.
