GC Pro Spotlight: Glenn Rosenstein Productions

If you’re not familiar with Glenn Rosenstein’s name, you should take a closer look inside the liner notes of some of your favorite albums. Glenn began his music career at the legendary Power Station, assisting alongside some of the most legendary producers, engineers and artists in the business. After moving to New York's historic Sigma Sound, Glenn became a highly sought-after mixer and engineer, working with such artists as U2, Madonna, Talking Heads, The Ramones, and many others.
After moving into the producer’s seat, Glenn’s projects have won multiple Grammy awards, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe as well. His music production and mixing credits for film and TV include The Sopranos, The Last Emperor, Beverly Hills 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more. On the music front, his productions continue to be highly visible and diverse, from Bif Naked to Take 6, James Taylor, Ziggy Marley, Jars Of Clay and others.

Recently, Glenn created Skylight Studio, a two-room personal facility located in his own home, most of which was equipped by GC Pro.

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GC Pro: We are visiting here with Glenn Rosenstein in his beautiful private facility in Nashville, Tennessee. Thanks for joining us Glenn. Thanks for taking the time.

Glenn Rosenstein: Thank you for taking your time. It’s an honor to have you guys in here.

GC Pro: Thanks. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’d heard about this project and seen the photos, and it’s beautiful in person.

So, we like to start the interviews with a little bit of background. Tell us… I know you’re from the East Coast-

GR: Born and raised in New York City.

GC Pro: And what led you into this sordid life of audio?

GR: (laughs) I really wasn’t equipped to do anything else. It was kind of one of those, I had no choice. It was that or selling ice cream off of a Good Humor truck. But I was just always interested in music, and I had very young parents who exposed me at an early age to a lot of what was, at that time, contemporary music. My mom was a big Beatles fan, and was always making me stay up and watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, kind of like a lot of other people.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: I was very interested in music at a very early age, and played guitar early on. Played with a bunch of bands. Played at clubs and in cover bands, and I really started learning about what made music work together at a very early age. How music was constructed by playing in those cover bands. I had the best school in the world; I learned from listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.

I found out, when I was in my teens, that there was actually a position called “record producer”.

GC Pro: A revelation!

GR: This was something that, when I learned about it, it was intriguing, and I hoped at some point that I could actually turn that aspiration into a paying gig. I was very, very fortunate to be able to do exactly that.

GC Pro: And what was that path? Did you learn about the whole process of being a second engineer and-

GR: Yeah!

GC Pro: - intern at a studio…

GR: I started as a gofer at the Power Station in New York. That was my first professional audio hire. I did live sound for a couple of bands, for a couple of years prior to starting at Power Station. I got a job there as a weekend night receptionist (laughing). It was a combination of driving the girl friends home, scoring dope for the musicians, you know,the usual.

GC Pro: That was 1979?

GR: Yeah. Power Station had one and a half rooms, at that point.

GC Pro: Did they have the amazing drum room already?

GR: They had the amazing drum room, and they had amazing engineers who were extremely kind to me. I was literally the weekend night receptionist, and guys like Neil Dorfsman and Bob Clearmountain would allow me to put the telephone on “night answer”, and they’d allow me in the studio and let me watch what they were doing.

GC Pro: While they were making Aerosmith records.

GR: Exactly. I mean, you know, the David Bowie Scary Monsters record was one of the first record I got to sit in on.

GC Pro: Wow.

GR: And it was great. At that moment in time, it really was a golden opportunity because the clientele at Power Station really ran the gamut. So it wasn’t only heavy metal or only rock and roll or only R&B. It was a little bit of everything. On any given day, you had Bruce Springsteen working on The River, and then you had Diana Ross working on Upside Down with the guys from Chic.

GC Pro: Right. The best studio players in the world.

GR: Best studio players in the world, truly the best engineers in the world. They were very generous to me. Took a guy who was basically some kid who kinda came in and was lucky enough to score a job answering telephones-

GC Pro: But one who was exhibiting the passion and the aptitude, probably as well.

GR: Well, I don’t know about the aptitude (laughs). But I definitely had the drive for it. It was just a great opportunity. From there, I went to Sigma Sound, and started as an assistant engineer, and worked my way up to being an independent engineer and mixer and producer.

GC Pro: Now, during that period, it sounds like you were mentored and learned a lot from engineers. Was the goal always to be a producer? Was engineering a path to get to being a producer, ultimately?

GR: Yes. I was really aggravating to many of my clients, as well as the engineers I was assisting for, telling them how someday I was gonna produce records (laughs).

GC Pro: So you were born to be a producer!

GR: I don’t know if that’s the case, but I definitely was focused on wanting to do that, yeah.

GC Pro: That’s interesting.

GR: It was fun, and I had this little run of hits at a time when engineers were hired by studios - they were not independent engineers. The other guys I was working with at Sigma, the other engineers who were there, some phenomenal guys like the late Mike Hutchinson, Jay Mark, John Potoker, Jim “Doc” Dougherty. All of these guys who had this deep love of the craft, and really wanted to be top-notch mixers. I was getting a disproportionate amount, at that moment, of hits, complaining about how much I didn’t like engineering (laughs).

GC Pro: Right.

GR: I really was focused on wanting to produce.

GC Pro: At that time, the producer and engineer were clearly different roles. Now they’re intermingled to a large extent.

GR: yeah.

GC Pro: I mean, they were more separate at that point.

GR: There were certainly guys… I mean, you look at Bob Clearmountain who is certainly known for mixing, but he’s produced some wonderful records. He does both, even back in those days. But now, I think you’re right. It has changed some, and it seems to me like there are a lot of guys out there who come from here in town… Justin Niebank is a guy who’s a great producer but is also a fabulous engineer. A couple of other guys here in town who do that on a regular basis.

I continue to engineer, but I engineer out of necessity. There are a handful of guys that I really like to use to mix all my records and track all my records. When it comes to doing vocals and overdubs, I’ll do it because it’s just easier for me to do it. But the short of it is, having been an engineer, having been a mixer, I really respect that craft.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: And I want to work with people who are far better, and more intuitive in it than I can hope to be at this point.

GC Pro: Did the top-gun singles mixer like Clearmountain or Andy Wallace exist yet…. Was that already a sub-category?

GR: Probably not yet. I’m a little older than that. Most of the guys who were kind of those top-gun guys were more associated with the studio. That’s why you had a place like Sigma Sound, which is where I did the bulk of my work when I was a staff guy. And you had places like Power Station, which were certainly known for Bob, or Neil Dorfsman and the other guys who came through there. But I think at that time, it was more about the studio. It’s kinda like you were talking about Capitol.

GC Pro: It was a destination.

GR: Right. Exactly! They didn’t say, “Who’s the guy who’s working the console, who’s working the controls at Capitol?” They were thinking, “Well, Capitol’s got the best echo chambers on the West Coast,” or “Capitol’s got this great selection of microphones.” In those days, I was right on the cusp of when it changed over between the star studio versus the star engineer, or the star mixer.

GC Pro: Right. And what’s the evolution from there to where we are today, when so much work is done in a personal studio like your environment? What year do you think that transition started to happen in a big way?

GR: Probably about ten years ago, if even that much. Pro Tools and the whole digital audio workstation had a real profound effect on the way that every body has… whether they’ve chosen to work that way or have been forced to work that way, it is the way it’s done. That is just the way it’s done. And over the years as Pro Tools and Digital Performer and RADAR and all of these… Nuendo… become sonically more pleasing and become more of a…

GC Pro: A real alternative.

GR: Right, absolutely. But economics has certainly played an enormous role in all of that. The economy of what used to be a three to five million dollar investment is turning into a $100,000 investment, a $70,000 investment. It’s the perfect storm of music. You’ve got technology exploding, the price of things coming down, and then the music industry itself going through-

GC Pro: The distribution channel being broken.

GR: Exactly. And again, we were talking about what constitutes a big budget record.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: And how that is really forcing people to change their business model and the way they approach a specific record. You have the option of doing the record for less money and finding alternative ways of getting that record done, versus going, “I’m not going to do that record at all.” With the advent of relatively inexpensive digital audio workstations, projects that really could not have gotten done ten years ago now actually do get to be done.

Is it a blessing or a curse? I’m sure that everybody feels differently; I think it’s a little bit of both. I miss the old days, but, for the most part, the old days don’t exist anymore.

GC Pro: And it’s exciting that so many more artists can have a chance to get their music out there. But the amount of content is really kind of overwhelming.

GR: True. And then there’s a whole other conversation about the revenue stream, and how that exactly is going to work. I don’t think that people really know, but until the path of revenue is as dependable as it was twenty or thirty years ago, alternative ways of getting music out there are going to take a more and more significant role.

On top of that, even when the dependability of revenue perhaps gets back to where it was, even if it comes from a different place, you still have all of these people who have grown up through the system. It’s very, very different than the system that I grew up in.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: Where you have guys who are fabulous producers and fabulous engineers who may have never actually sat down and miked a drum kit. That’s fine; that’s fair game because there’s a whole kind of music that’s being made without all of that.

GC Pro: Right. Being an old-school guy myself, that’s kind of sad. My question for you is that in the MP3/iPod world that we live in where many people have never heard the sound that can be reproduced… what do you think of what the fidelity of the compressed distribution methods we’re using is doing to the music industry?

GR: I think that in a bigger sense, you have to separate art from commerce. I think that commerce really dictates how we make a living; art dictates what it is that we really love, and what we really like to hear. Where those places meet, they meet in different places historically. When we were kids, since you and I are around the same age, the big conversation when I was a teenager was, “What was the signal-to-noise ratio on the stereo that you bought?” You know, “What brand of stereo did you buy, what are the speakers in your house?”

GC Pro: What was your cartridge-

GR: Exactly. Total harmonic distortion was a big conversation in those days. That just doesn’t exist anymore.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: You buy a stereo at Sam’s Club or Costco and you pay $350 bucks, you get a surround system, including a receiver and all of that. It kinda shows while I really admire a lot of engineers and producers who strive for a higher artistic level, the demand is not really about that anymore. Not just because I say so; that is the world we live in.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: So when it comes down to that thing between art and commerce, depending on where you are in your career, commerce tends to win. It tends to. The guys that I tend to work with are definitely more art driven, but they understand expediency, the economy of music. They understand being able to move quickly. They understand the concept of budget because like everybody else in our business, they’re seeing the industry consolidation firsthand.

GC Pro: And they want their material on Rhapsody and iTunes immediately, because they know that’s the way to get the distribution out there.

GR: I would venture to say that most of the people who will be reading this, because they are seeing this online, are probably listening to music on iTunes, or on some other player that’s inside their laptop as they look at this. And they’re probably listening to some record, whether they’re saying, “Man, I would way rather it be the old days, or would way rather be listening to an incredible stereo with $10,000 speakers.” But the fact is that all of us receive our music in that MP3-ish, reduced-

GC Pro: If it’s a great song, it should be able to come through in any format, right?

GR: I can agree with that because when I was a kid, the music that was delivered to me was delivered through an AM radio. And that AM radio was a little pocket transistor radio.

GC Pro: Beatles, Led Zeppelin coming out of there.

GR: Exactly. But you did have the treat, on the other hand, of that rich kid down the block who had an incredible stereo, and for the first time hearing Sgt. Pepper’s, and hearing that separation and going, “Oh my God! This is what it sounds like!”

GC Pro: Exactly.

GR: And that was the thing, perhaps, that juiced all of us into wanting to get into this as a business. Again, it doesn’t matter whether I say so or don’t say so; it’s not an opinion. Our business has just changed radically. It’s changed even more radically in the last five years. The goal for the most part is not the same as it once was.

And that’s not to denigrate the gear that we’re using. The gear that’s here in my studio is capable of recording on par with classic recordings. But I just don’t know that that’s the focus anymore.

GC Pro: or that it makes the distribution channel anymore.

GR: Exactly. I don’t think that when I’m sitting and planning out a record that I’m sitting there and thinking to myself, “Well, I don’t really give a fuck what it sounds like because it’s only going to go to MP3 anyway, and the bulk of our buying audience right now is going to be downloading digitally.” I’m never thinking that. I’m sitting there thinking, “What’s the best possible way it can sound and be formatted.”

GC Pro: Do you concentrate on different formats? Do you listen on the little speakers and on the mono speaker and say, “I want to make sure this sounds good in the car and…”

GR: Well, we’ve got NHT’s, the M-00’s or whatever. Even the biggest mixing speakers that I’m using these days are the KRK V-8’s.

GC Pro: And the studio monitors that you’re describing, like the KRK V-8’s and the NHT’s as reference, you’ve got-

GR: Some of those were chosen by Steve Marcantonio. Steve is an engineer/mixer I work with a lot, he mixes a lot of my stuff. I work with George Massenburg, over at his great place at Blackbird Studios. He’s using speakers… different brands than what I’m using, but he’s using stuff that is basically a just a little larger than bookshelf sizes.

GC Pro: He’s got Genelec 8040’s for his main speakers.

GR: Exactly. I certainly can’t speak for him or any of the other people that I work with, but speaker technology has come a long way as well. As far as detail goes and as far as sonics go, this is more than satisfying for what it is that we do. We make pretty good sounding records in this room.

GC Pro: Well, this is a world-class facility. I mean, we’ve got the D-Control system with a six-card Pro Tools HD system. You’ve got world-class outboard gear from Avalon, Universal Audio, Tube-Tech. Vintage instruments… I saw your vintage amplifiers in the other room. You’ve obviously got a fabulous mic collection. This is a very serious personal room.

GR: Much of it supplied by GC Pro, I might add (laughs).

GC Pro: Thank you. You gave us some pretty stellar compliments awhile ago, and I don’t want you to have to repeat all that, but how would you sum up your experience with the selection process and the service that you received from GC Pro?

GR: Well, one of the nice things about it are the sales representatives for GC Pro, who really invested a lot of time and a lot of effort into helping make this room happen. Chad and Pepper did a lot of work. I know a lot about gear and I’ve been around gear for a long time. But in trying to put this room together and do it in a really credible way and make my clientele happy, these guys alerted me to a lot of the newer things that I might not have been as familiar with. Everything that we installed here works, and it works every single day. Without the education process that they were willing to provide, I don’t think that we would have made as good a room. Without a doubt.

GC Pro: the system integration and the choice of gear here, you’re really pleased with.

GR: Absolutely, Very much so, yeah. Also, Chad comes from a studio background. He’s not just another guy hawking gear. He was my assistant engineer on a number of records that I produced. So I had an affiliation with Chad long before he was an employee at GC Pro, and that credibility that he brings to it… you’re seeing a testament to all of that.

GC Pro: Every piece of gear in here is a world-class piece.

GR: It was a great collaborative effort. Without sounding like a major ass-kiss, the GC Pro experience was a great collaborative effort, and made this room into something that we, on a day-to-day basis, prove that it works. It works for me, it works for my clients. This is how I make my living. It’s really great.

GC Pro: Speaking of your clients, how have they reacted? What’s your workload like? Are you getting the amount of bookings you had hoped?

GR: Thankfully, we’re working all the time. We’re booked so much that… I think I might have mentioned this in the Digizine article, but I’m really on the threshold of needing a second room. One of the things that this has allowed us to do is now we can mix here. That’s one function that we had not been able to do in this room prior to putting in the D-Control. I’m now stuck with that other room (laughs).

So we put a little Pro Tools LE system in that office, in the back, but I think that pretty soon, we’re gonna go for another D-Control.

GC Pro: You mentioned your wife was extremely flexible and tolerant.

GR: My wife is beyond belief. She’s not a gear hound in any way, shape, or form, so I don’t think she sees the advantage in inheriting a ton of recording equipment when I’m gone (laughing). But that said, she’s absolutely great about it.

But with the clientele who come in here, I think that at first they’re a little surprised at the level of gear that we have here. This is something that would ordinarily be seen in a commercial facility. I think that if there was any trepidation on the part of any client that we work with, that we’re not getting in a professional environment, that is immediately dispelled when they come in.

Beyond that, I think that there’s a comfort level of people being in a nice, warm home environment that tends to pull better performances.

GC Pro: The performers are really, really comfortable at home.

GR: I think they like it.

GC Pro: They literally feel at home.

GR: Yeah. Exactly. We like having people here anyway, so it’s great. We also do want to say, though, that this is not a commercial facility. This is a personal workspace for me. We still rely heavily on a lot of the other commercial facilities in the area. We work consistently with The Sound Kitchen, with Paragon, with Blackbird. We feel like we have a partnership with them to continually feed things back and forth.

GC Pro: In the old days, you remember I’m sure, there was a resistance when the home studio was first coming along, especially in LA. The studio owners were scared to death, and tried to do legal blocking of these things.

GR: Right.

GC Pro: The owners today, like you’re describing, are much more likely to embrace the relationship.

GR: Well, I think one of the things that happens is, the kind of music that I do, I’m not necessarily Nashville-centric. And I used to travel extensively for that work. Now that I actually have this anchor -- pointing to console (laughs). Now that I have this in my studio, it actually keeps me in town more. I am more frequently working in these commercial facilities than I would have been ten years ago.

GC Pro: This is helping keep more business in the local commercial studios.

GR: I know it sounds like a crock of shit. (laughs)

GC Pro: I’m buying it!

GR: But for me, personally, it definitely does.

GC Pro: The home studio has come full circle. The professional home studio.

GR: I think that sounds like the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard (laughs).

GC Pro: (laughs) I’m definitely going with that.

GR: All righty.

GC Pro: It’s good that we set up all these private rooms. It’s good for your business.

GR: Right. (laughs)

GC Pro: It really is.

GR: Thankfully, I’m not their bankers. It’s a tough time, and I don’t really envy the commercial facility owner. Look, I still work at those studios, and I get it. I know what a tough road that is right now, and I know what a tough road it is for most major labels right now. It’s hard to feel sympathetic about a major label. Most people feel the same way about majors as they do about an insurance company. No one gives a shit when insurance companies post a lousy year in terms of stock.

GC Pro: Right.

GR: But the truth is that the music business is in a very precarious state right now. I think that studios like the ones I have in my house are an answer to that, and an answer that reluctantly or otherwise, is still the reality of our business right now.

GC Pro: And it’s really exciting in a way too. The level of gear that’s available now, size-wise and price-wise... the quality that it offers for this type of environment is very, very exciting. The demand for content isn’t getting any smaller. It is a multimedia world and music content is a huge part of it.

GR: No one wants to pay for it, but... (laughs).

GC Pro: That’s the problem with the music business side.

GR: But yeah, I think it’s great, and I think that manufacturers who have gotten very hip to the concept of this kind of an environment... I think it’s a combination of “It’s about time,” and it’s great to see them doing that, whether it’s Neve, Trident... creating smaller format consoles that fit in peoples’ homes so they can get that Trident sound, that Neve sound...

GC Pro: API has also done it. SSL led the way with the AWS 900.

GR: Love the SSL. I do. Don Wershba, I love you.

GC Pro: (laughs)

GR: But, yeah... it’s great to see all of that happening. I have to ask you - I would imagine that GC Pro must be the true beneficiary of this real revolution.

GC Pro: Well, GC Pro was created in anticipation of it. The gear’s gotten so much more powerful and so much more accessible. While the tools that professionals are using and the budgets everyone’s working on have gotten smaller and smaller. So it’s worked out very well.

GR: Cool, I think that about sums it up!

GC Pro: This hang was great, thank you very much Glenn!

GR: You’re welcome!