Michael Walker: If you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician is a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family just don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money towards achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where Modern Musician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been a result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, it’s why I have my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, but without really a fanbase or a business and be able to take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, thousands, or even millions of fans with their music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who share their success and their knowledge with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now.

Tony Corelli: Connect with every musician you find that you're interested in in your area. Listen to people's stuff, it's easy to take the time to do it, follow their pages, subscribe to them on Spotify. Compliment other bands, connect with other bands. And as you're working on something, if you think somebody else's sound and style fits what you're doing, try to get them in. Try to connect.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

All right. I’m excited to be here today with Tony Corelli. So Tony has collaborated with thousands of artists, both locally and nationally. He's worked with several Grammy winning musicians, and he's become a respected figure in the music industry, especially in the Baltimore area. He's actually developed a highly acclaimed modified microphone, which has been used with major bands like Steely Dan, Tool, Fish, & Rage Against the Machine. He's really built up a community and a space in Baltimore in particular. And so I'm looking forward to connecting with him today to talk about the creative process of being a musician and collaboration in building a scene in your local area and what that means for us as Modern Musicians in terms of being creative, especially in the world with AI and more creative tools at our disposal. How do we really build a network and collaborate more? So, Tony, thanks so much for taking time to be here today.

Tony Corelli: Good to be here. Yeah, I'm in a recording session right now. We just kind of paused it for this, so the artists went out to get some lunch and we're doing this interview and I'm pretty much doing this just around the clock. Just staying the night in the studio, which I love. But I'm glad to be here with you guys.

Michael: That's awesome. I appreciate you taking a little bit of a break from the music creation to come to create a different kind of music. Maybe to kick things off, could you share a little bit more detail about your story and kind of how you got started in the Baltimore music scene and starting to work with so many artists?

Tony: Yeah, I've played in bands and recorded keyboard player. So I feel like keyboard players are naturally arrangers. A lot of synths have sequencers on it. So in middle school and high school, I was arranging songs on my keyboard and when I would meet songwriters at school, we'd get together and I would make some music using four track cassette tape back then. I would sequence everything and then we would play the keyboard and play the live tracks. And so I would sing on one mic and I would play guitar into the other one. So, it was pretty natural going from that very primitive system, to learning other recording and I got into recording right after that. So really right out of high school, I started recording. I still have my network of friends from high school that we're all ready to start recording and doing more with their band. So that was my core base of musicians I was working with. Bands break up and when bands break up, a lot of times I record all the pieces of it. So as bands break up, it multiplies, which is kind of a funny paradox in trying to keep the peace with everybody. And then sometimes if someone splinters off like, all right, well, now it's two projects. That got me started and I just do it day and night. So a year or two, I had my demo tapes and they were really cassette tapes. I was right at the end of that whole analog thing. So I started in analog and then I did digital tape with an analog mixer. We were making cassette tapes. CD’s weren't as common. And then it went to CD’s and then just immediately it's streaming and all digital. So it was a lot of changes in a short period of time. But luckily I got my start and really got to experience all those changes and followed it. And just stay cutting edge here, I mix a lot of stuff in Dolby Atmos, which is like the newest format instead of 5.1 or set a mono, stereo, or 5.1. This is up to 128 channels of immersive audio. A lot more complicated. So it's definitely fun doing that and seeing all these changes over the years.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your perspective around witnessing that evolution from analog to digital. I wasn't really in the music scene back then, but I've talked with some people who witnessed that shift from out-of-the-box to in the box and the resistance to it from the previous model to the new model and: oh, this is going to ruin music. Eventually it really untapped the gate. It allowed us to be more creative and right now as I'm recording this, we're experiencing this potential major shift in how music's created with AI tools.

Tony: Major!

Michael: And so I'm curious to hear your thoughts around having been through that experience from analog to digital, what were some of the interesting things that you noticed and how did you make that shift? What kinda impact did it make for you to be on the cutting edge, and how do you see what's happening right now in terms of music generation with AI and how can someone get really on the cutting edge with that?

Tony: As an engineer, tools are always good. I'm always looking for things to help me create the classic bands. The Beatles are a great example; a band that was always cutting edge. They named a lot of effects. Like flanger was named by John Lennox. People were bringing stuff to them: try this thing out. The bands would try to get as many tracks as they could. They could sync two tape machines up, instead of 16 tracks. Now, 24 tracks. Wait a minute. We can sync two together and 48 tracks. Now we have unlimited tracks. So yeah, I mean, everybody can misuse anything. So that was a concern: what if we have too many tracks and we put too much in songs? But Bohemian Rhapsody and some of these songs just had it. They did as much as they could, they just had some track limits and they would bounce stuff down and do other stuff. So everybody has always used the tools to make the best music they make and I think we look back and romanticize that sometimes. Like: Oh, they did it this way, which is humbling because when you think about the Beatles doing what they did with less than what we have. If you buy a Mac laptop, now you have more than the Beatles had. I mean, you can do these unlimited track counts on GarageBand. You got great sounds, right? I mean, it used to be, if you wanted a sound, you needed that big unit into your space and it would be expensive and it would be hard to do. So I love having more tools in people's hands. I do know that there's, of course, a lot of threats from AI to different things. One thing that I noticed right away is sync music, background music for corporate stuff. To me, it's done. I mean, it's just going to be generative. It's okay. I didn't get into that work. I actually resisted that work. I have a sync rep and I never wanted my songs in libraries. I just don't like that idea of a library full of generic background music. But I also understand there's people that play keyboard that can just do that all day, crank those things out, and they used to get paid for doing that. And that's maybe gone, or going to be gone next year. I don't know. It's a major disruption. I would say this is a bigger impact than how the engineers ultimately get their sound. There wasn't a huge difference when we switched from analog tape, digital tape, digital tape to hard disk. I mean, there are all differences in the way it's handled behind the scenes, but this is of course a much more significant difference. So that's a lot to talk about. I'm ultimately glad that it gives a lot to songwriters. Songwriters can develop stuff. Some songwriters come in to me with ideas and I develop them, and I think that there's definitely value in working with a producer. It's very different than you got to generate it and you got to tell it what you want it to do instead of having an actual collaborator. So there's definitely going to be limits when you don't have a human with you. I'm not one of those people that’s like: Oh, the humans are going to do better. It's like, I know the machines can do a great job on the arranging. I totally get that. But I think that if you want to collaborate with people, if you want a real producer, that's a little bit of a different thing. If you just want to sound like a certain artist, then you could copy it with the robot. I don't think you should sound like other artists. I think you should try to be original. I think if you're scraping the internet and looking for other stuff to copy off of, what if those things, the machines just ran on their own for a couple of years and just all music averages out into one, average sound? [both laughing]

Michael: Just one note.

Tony: Yeah, because it just keeps recycling; it just keeps finding the common denominator of every song until it just works. So somebody's gotta make the original content. My studio's geared for making original content. I have a huge tracking room. I can do a whole orchestra in here. I could do big band. I do a lot of strings and stuff. So my studio is set up for people who want to come in and bang their drums and play a tube amp nice and loud and bring in a real string section. Now I realize if you're a songwriter and you want a string section behind you, you don't got the time and money, it might be nice to say: Hey, AI, make me a string arrangement. And I'm going to say it would be a good arrangement. I'm an arranger, but I know that these things can do a good job. But if you're an actual violinist or you want to work with violinists and cellists, then you're still going to need a physical space to do it. So, I'm glad I still have space for it. So that's my take on AI.

Michael: Super interesting. Yeah. I mean, it definitely seems like we're still in the phase where AI alone is not as good as AI + human. It's really like the humans prompting the AI and within the music space, it seems like in the last few days we've had some huge breakthroughs. Have you seen udio.com?

Tony: Some people are sharing songs from it.

Michael: Just insane

Tony: I didn't mess with it myself, but people I know messed with it. They're saying they're like: Oh, it's over guys, for beat makers. And maybe it is for beat makers. Especially the ones that didn't know what they were doing. And that sounds kind of harsh, but there are people that just put stuff together. They were given building blocks and in fruity loops and other things, and they were putting stuff together, maybe it was interesting. But they were ultimately coloring by numbers. And if you are doing that, then yeah, AI is going to knock that out right away. And udio.com, yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, the point that you brought up around the first thing to go will be like background music or things that are used in sync placements that don't really have a signature characteristic where it should be about like the artist or something that someone recognizes. It seems like that's, unfortunately my heart goes out to everyone who that's their livelihood.

Tony: Yeah!

Michael: But it's so much easier to just type in what you want, click a button and then you have it to be able to iterate on it. It'd be really interesting to see what happens in terms of original artists using it to generate demos or generate a track that they can then use Moises to remove the stems and then have a fully built out track for them to record stuff on top of. It's wild, man. Based on the world that you're in, I think you'd really be blown away by the udio.com tools specifically. I mean, everyone that's listening to this right now, if you haven't checked it out yet, udio.com. There's one before, gosh, what was it called? Suno.ai.

Tony: I see that one too.

Michael: That one was cool. I played around with them, Like, wow, like that's cool! But I'm like: eh, it's still pretty robotic and it's not quite there. udio.com. There's a bunch of songs that I would not have known this was generated by AI and they have some really good tools for trimming the edges where you can add an intro or an outro and you can create legitimate songs. At least like songs that are 80-90% of the way there. And then there's just like a few lines that are a little bit weird. We were like: I might change that line. I'm just imagining you have someone like yourself or a producer that is really good with the tools who can take out the stems and add their own pieces, add different vocals on top, just how quickly and easily you can create high quality music. It’s just mind blowing.

Tony: And again, in my space, I'm working right now with hard rock band American Jet Set. They're on Golden Robot Records. So they're a live band that plays, and the drummer came in with his drum kit. AI is not going to impact that recording. Not in the foreseeable future, because they're a live band, which I think artists need to concentrate on right now. If you were just putting music out online, these tools every month are just advancing so much. So people with no musical talent could start prompting these things and who knows what they're going to come up with. So I think musicians need to make sure they get good on their instruments live; good on performing. But in this case, as I was saying, the band is performing their songs; recording their songs. So in that case, we're not looking to create anything other than what they are physically doing; what they could do in a rehearsal space, which is a very different thing than a solo artist who maybe doesn't play an instrument and needs a track made for them.

Michael: Makes a ton of sense. Yeah. It's like playing live. It'll be an interesting litmus test of AI  when a robot can perform live with a band and they can actually follow along and do stuff back and forth. [both laughing] Definitely.

Tony: With hologram people. Yeah. And I think on the larger scale when it comes to sync, a cool song in a big scene for a show, you still want that to be an artist you know. People like to see artists live, to connect with artists, look at their social media content, which hopefully stays real. Cause people could start to have the bots start to write their statuses for that and stuff. I mean, it's probably already happening. But it's the lower level of, I think you said that, the less the script, like just background music that might go, but hopefully people are still looking for connection to artists. And to start to like somebody because a lot of the people who have the best following, there's a personal connection that people have, or they feel like they're a community of the fans of that band. And you'll definitely lose community if there's no live shows. If it's just a generative AI virtual band, I don't know if people would wear their shirts. I'm wearing a band shirt right now: OSM. Low is one of my favorite bands. When I go to a Low show, it's my type of people. We talk about the philosophical implications of their songs and their theology or whatever. I imagine you wouldn't get that. I don't know. We'll see. But if there's a virtual band, I feel like you wouldn't wear the virtual band shirt. You may not have that same type of thing. So, there's those kinds of benefits to being a live musician that I think musicians need to really lean into as people are going to be able to make stuff online. If you're only putting your stuff online and promoting it onto playlists and stuff, it's going to get really competitive. I saw somebody just released something, just a local person. I don’t know, but I think that it was all AI made. It's okay if they did it. Now people are like: I made this song and it's like, okay, well, it's not an actual singer and you're prompting it. If it's good, it's good. But I think focus on being able to actually perform the songs and connect with people.

Michael: Yeah, you nailed it. It seems like the biggest; the most important thing to focus on is about the connection and the community building. An early point you made too, around the tools as really different scale, different type of revolution, like from analog to digital, because it sounded like that was a similar thing in some ways where people were like: it's not real because it's in the box and it's and there's even some concerns that like this is going to hurt our ears because it's not like actually real music. And then over time, we came to understand that you have these tools that make it easier, but it's still about that creativity. It's still about you as an artist deciding how these things come together and basing this idea, this intention. And it does seem like with AI tools now, even the ones that are like generating some songs that are like fully fleshed out songs, it's still not quite there on its own. Right? It's just a tool. It's like if you can use it as a tool to speed up your workflow. It's kind of like having a chainsaw if you're going to use a chainsaw, like you want to use it in the right way, or if you're going to sculpt an ice sculpture, it's going to be faster to do it with a better tool for it. But what matters is still the creativity, the artwork around it, and ultimately about the connection and the community that you're building around it. 

Tony: Yeah.

Michael: Cool man. So let's talk about that piece of it: the connection, the community building and the live interaction. What are some creative things that you see in artists doing nowadays that have helped them to actually build a really tight knit, strong community that actually supports the music and actually to build a music scene?

Tony: Yeah. Well, it's really cool that it’s easy to find other musicians in your area online. So this connection is great. Things have changed so quickly. I'm not young, but I’m not super old. It was a very different time 20 years ago when to meet other musicians, you would go to a show and you had a flyer for your upcoming show and you had to make sure you talk to the person to tell them what you were up to. Now it's very easy to say I'm playing here and I'll tag everybody, but it's easy to connect with other musicians. If you see a band in your area and they have a cellist or some musician that you might want to work with, it's very easy to find these people and connect with them. So it's easy to make these initial contacts, which is great. We can do meaningful stuff now where you can do a song and people can hear it. I like forming a live band, but you don't have to be able to make a huge commitment to playing a bunch of shows and rehearsals. You can say, come in one afternoon, we're going to do a song together and then we'll promote it and people will be able to hear it. So there's a lot of opportunities for that kind of thing. And so, I would say for musicians to connect with every musician you find that you're interested in in your area. Listen to people's stuff, it's easy to take the time to do it, it’s easy to like/follow their pages, subscribe to them on Spotify. Artists love any kind of feedback. We all know it. Isn't that such a common problem? You post something stupid and everybody talks about it. You post some song that you really put a lot of time and effort into…. It's nice to know someone really heard it. If another musician writes in: I love the vocals, those lyrics are really well thought out. That's really exciting for an artist. You really love that kind of feedback and it's easy to go around and give that kind of feedback and be real about it. I don't mean just say nice things, but usually you can find the good in anything if you want to. I mean, bands have different focuses, different strengths and weaknesses. So find those things and compliment other bands, connect with other bands. And as you're working on something, if you think somebody else's sound and style fits what you're doing, try to get them in. Try to connect. And when you're working on a song, if it's a song you've written and you bring somebody into it, hopefully the person fits into it, but it's cool to be able to say: this is my song, these are the general borders, general feel of my song. Let's set this other person in and still fit what we're working on, but add another shade, just some more coloration of theirs to it. And it makes it a more interesting song, especially if you're going to keep making songs. It's just good to have some other styles thrown in there.

Michael: 100%. Yeah. It's sort of like when you have a baby and you have multiple different people come together and the baby has the DNA of its parents, but it's more interesting. It's unique because it has these different strands of DNA where if it's the exact same family thread that just keeps that there's no new DNA, there's all sorts of bad things that happen from incestual relationships. [both laughing] So it seems like a similar kind of thing with music too.

Tony: Yeah. And the prompting! If you're the prompter… What do we call the person who generates the generative AI?

Michael: [jokingly] Prompt engineer is the official term! [both laughing] 

Tony: The promptus! The promptifier! The prompter that likes Billie Eilish is like: all right, do this in the style of Billie Eilish. It's going to average out after a while if you're not mixing up those styles. And if there's no Billie Eilish to feed the scraping of the robots then… There's always going to be a need for the people to give AI something to steal. [both laughing] That’s the reality of it. And I mean, obviously, that's really affecting the visual arts, but the visual artists people, they need to look at a style of something: Oh, in the style of this person? Okay. So we still need these people to make these styles for the thing to copy off of. And a way to do that is just to keep expanding your horizons. Take a broad amount of influences. If you're in a certain genre of music, Step out of it. Listen to some other stuff. Find the good in other genres. I love jazz. Love jazz piano. Really opened my mind to a lot of things about piano. And when I talk to other rock guys, a lot of the musicians that I really like, also like jazz and understand other stuff; they're into other things. And some people know nothing about it. As soon as they talk about it, you realize: Oh, you've never even listened to any of that. You should! You should find out what makes some of these other artists great that have a different objective when they play guitar. And in the case of jazz, just a whole different set of music theory. Just the whole mentality that some people are missing.

Michael: Super smart. Yeah. It's interesting, the point that you brought up around the training data for AI. One of the obstacles, this was also related to video generation and text generation, is: what happens when you run out of data to train it on based on human data? I'm not an expert in AI, but I remember hearing about this specific issue. Apparently they found some pretty promising results from AI being able to train based on generative data that the AI created. So it's improving by being able to generate and simulate extra things. So that might be a potential thing that the AI is able to iterate on over time is actually generating new things and then be able to iterate based on it. But we'll see what happens with that.

Tony: We'll see, but we won't have to wait long. We'll see soon.

Michael: That's true. Yeah, it's rapidly advancing. So, one of the points that you brought up was just around building a community around your local music scene and your local musicians. You mentioned that nowadays it's easier than ever to actually find people near you that are making music and connect with them. Where would be your go-to place? Let's say you moved to a completely new city and you're like: you know what, I want to find some artists to collaborate with, or I want to dig into the music scene locally, how would you go about doing that? What specifically would you search for? What websites and how do you build those relationships?

Tony: Yeah, I would just go to a local physical space. I would go to a local show. Local shows around here tend to be 4-5 local bands. So if you go to a big show, there's a national band and an opener, and you guys may know sometimes the opener pays to actually play that show. But you may not meet either of them. You're not going to meet the big band, you're probably not going to meet the opener either. Even in the audience, it's hard to talk to anyone else. You're only going to see the people right next to you. In Baltimore, we have so many different places, but they're like them in every town. I would go to find a live music club that's going to have 4-5 openers. Those types of bands are going to be in the room the whole time. It's all going to be local music fans. It wouldn't take long to catch on. For Grammy week, I was at the Grammys a couple months ago, and there was a showcase at this little restaurant and there was not many people there. And some of them were award winning musicians, like good players, and because I had gone to the Grammys the year before, I knew several people that were playing it. They all told me to come to this. I'm like, oh, cool. Yeah. 3 or 4 people that I know are playing this showcase. And when I went there, I met so many people. And the next day it was like I was a local with them. I was at the next event, I'm seeing all of them. All of them are talking to me like, what's new? And it's like: I just met you yesterday. There's a couple of new things that happened in the past 10 hours, but we became friends. If you're with other musicians, it's just easy to talk to. You know you have that in common. And so you just need to find where musicians are. Maybe a music store, maybe not. I never like what I'm hearing if I walk in the guitar center to be honest. But yeah, I would go to a place where people are actually playing shows here, like Metro gallery and there's just different venues here. So if I was to drop into another town, which I have literally done and it works for me, I'll just go to a show or if I find a musician, I'll be like, where do people like to play around here? Try to look for bands that are doing original music that I think are going to be worth checking out. Live music at a bar, that's like one band all night playing covers, that's definitely not what I'm talking about. No disrespect to that. I'm saying if you see 4, 5, 6, 7 bands, which is ridiculous, but that's just how we do it. And each of them has like 20 or 30 people watching them if they did a good job, that's what I'd be looking for. And then just find the best musicians in that.

Michael: Cool. Yeah. That's inspired me. I've been thinking this for a little while. I'm very busy, I’ve got the three kids, I’m running Modern Musician. But I've been thinking for a while, I'd love to connect with the local music scene here. I grew up in Vermillion, South Dakota. So very different place than where I am now in Orlando. But I think based on this conversation, I'm just going to do a better job of connecting with the local music scene and finding some venues like that, attending some shows and starting to build some local network with the music scene here.

Tony: Good. Yeah, you should do it. It's easy to do. And bands also, they regroup, rename, split up. So sometimes you meet a couple of people and you find that there's just a few people that are really active that next year, might be in a different band with a couple of different people, but it's those people. I've been doing this in Baltimore for 25 years now. I do kind of know everybody. If I go to a place, I'm going to know most of the bands playing. It's getting a little ridiculous. But you find that even when it seems like there's a lot of people, there's still a small core group that are booking the shows, that are playing and bringing people out, and it's not too hard to figure out who they are if you just watch it for a certain amount of time. It doesn't have to be a long time, but you get the hang of it. You'll know. You can find out in Orlando where the good live music is. Again, original live music, which is very different than cover bands, and who books them. That's what I've been doing when I got started. A lot of the early bands I recorded now own venues, or they're booking agents, or they’re managers. So, I had these great connections, but that's because we were friends and we all kind of came up together and we stayed in the music scene. So the only friends I've retained from school are my music friends. The other ones, I don't know what they're doing. Everytime one of them adds me, they're like a realtor or whatever, which is cool but I don't know. I hadn't kept up with this person, but this other guy that was always a good blues guitarist, I still see him at shows. He does lessons. He teaches the school of rock with the kids and he plays. And then I get to meet their fellow musicians. If I go out to a show, they will introduce me to the other people. And again, if you're just there, if you're there in the actual physical space community with people, it's pretty easy to meet people, especially if you come there with that intention and not in a pushy way. Don't go around handing your business card to everybody and don't be fake about it, but go and be like: I'm hanging out here tonight. I'm not looking for the first way out. One more tip there for bands: If you're playing a show, I don't know why this needs to be said, but stay there the whole time. Some bands will somehow only play during their set and then leave, or when the other bands are playing, very commonly, they're backstage, or they're in some other place, they play, they pack up, they leave, even while other bands are still playing. Just say: hey, this night is about promoting the band, connecting with fans, finding other bands, watching other bands, play your set, hang out and talk to people that you want to talk to. That's how you build community.

Michael: Good stuff, man. Yeah. I mean, that's really what it's all about. It's about the connecting, about the community, and music is an excuse for us to be able to express ourselves, but to be able to meet and connect with other people. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the mindset of being a producer. I do think, in particular with the tools that are evolving so rapidly, the end result is that there's more creativity, or the person who's coming up with the ideas or can visualize the thing that they want to create, is the one that's able to use those tools. It's getting more intuitive. It becomes easier, as long as you have a good sense of taste or you have a good direction, you have a good vision, then it's starting to get easier to be able to actualize that vision. So I'm curious from your perspective, as someone that lives in this production world/this creation world, how does someone evolve to become a good producer? What are some of the most important fundamentals that are true, regardless of whether you're generating completely analog, or in the box, or you're using AI tools to supercharge things? What are some of those key roles that come with being a producer?

Tony: Yeah. Well, you're right to identify that there are concepts that are just going to go across all of these changes that regardless of the medium, things that are always going to be important when it comes to understanding the heart of a song, developing that song, what it takes to write a good song. That hasn't really changed. Genres change. Of course, these mediums/these formats change, but that's not as significant in the grand scheme of things. What makes a song great? What makes it connect with people? So I think when you're a writer, it's always best to listen to a lot of music to understand stuff, and to find what makes you unique. So for songwriters, it's finding what makes you special. That's what I'm looking for as a producer. When I started, I was thinking: I'm going to be working with bands that aren't developed yet and aren't on major labels, so they're all going to be super experimental. I'm going to be doing styles of music that don't exist yet, and we're going to write the rules for them. And I’d love the chance to do that. It's not every day like I had thought it would be because some people really are fitting into a genre and that's okay. I feel like I'm being a little harsh sometimes, but these are just my opinions. Actually, that's something. Producers tend to be pretty opinionated so I'm going to own that. When I started 311 and like some kinda rapcore stuff was popular, it was a little after rage had already, to me, done it, like that's the sound; they created the sound, super big guitar with low gain single notes, sometimes, like just breaking the rules of what makes guitar work, just doing all the energy in the lyrical content and just the delivery of it, and it's got this aggression to it but it's not double tracked, drop-tuned guitars. And then when I would see people chasing that sound later, I'm like: it doesn't have the spark that band did so why are we trying to sound like that style? So for songwriters, I think: find your own style, find your own voice, and then my job as a producer or any producer you go to is to understand that and to develop that and bring that out and not try to make you sound like another artist, or to just have their own sound. Some producers have their own style, but a lot of the best ones just work with so many different bands and they care about what song they're working on, and they're doing it for the artists and not for themselves. They're not going to just make everyone sound the same; just have different singers over the same beat. They're going to work with the different sounds. And so that's definitely what I try to do when a band comes in. Right now I'm working with the American Jet Set, almost like an arena rock, throwback kind of sound, we've got these big gang vocals like a Bon Jovi kind of sound. That's what we're going for with them. And that's like all about that. And then I do a lot of indie stuff that is just the total thing. Everything has to sound kinda low key and just cool and hip and like you're not trying. It's a different attitude and that affects how you mic things. It affects a lot of things. And I think, again, the human element comes into play for that, where you're just not like: this is what a bass sounds like. What style is this person doing? All right. We're going to do fingerstyle bass. We're going to amp it. We're going to keep the mic really far back, or we're going to go real punchy. We're going to put a pick and we're going to run it through some drive and we're going to get a real close sound. So understanding the feel based on what the song is is just an important part of what I'm doing. And that's why I like to have a lot of tools. You’d mentioned the analog-digital switch. One thing was: it made a lot of things easier. And as you said, the generative stuff makes it easier. Having the tools easier to use is good. I don't like to fight with my equipment. I want it to just work for me. I recorded on an analog board and they have a lot of problems. So if you're going to record it on an analog board, be ready to solder stuff. Be ready to start to hear a track crackle and cut out. I don't like that when I'm working on a song. I want everything that I put in there to remain in there. I don't want the tape to wear out and stretch and the high end to start to disappear because we hit play on the bridge too much. That used to be a problem. We used to be like: we have to move on. We can't keep playing the section of the songs. We're literally wearing the tape out. So I use a lot of analog methods for capturing the sound: microphones, physical analog things. And then classic EQs, Neve, API, into classic tube compressors. Love tube compressors. Love my LA2A on vocals. I think it's just magical. But then once it gets into ProTools, which is what I use now, it stays sounding the way I wanted it to, which is great. When synthesizers first came out, you had to create the sound completely. You just got some waveforms and I have some analog synths. They're great. They definitely have limits. So then you start to get other keyboards where you can play a string pad. It sounds very much like real string. So I like that. I like being able to have a lot of sounds right there. I flip through the different sounds. When the Beatles wanted a Wurlitzer, you had to bring a Wurlitzer in. If they wanted a Mellotron, you had to roll a Mellotron into the place. If you wanted a pipe organ, you had to go to where a church was. You couldn't even move one of them around. So now I can just flip to a pipe organ sound. So I like having the sounds at my disposal. I think all that stuff's good, but you gotta just still know what you want to do with the song. You still have to be an arranger. You still have to understand the song. And I think that remains universal whether you're analog/digital/robot. Understanding the song and what it's going for. And if the sounds are more accessible, that's good. I don't mind. I don't think you need to fight for the sounds. I don't think they need to be expensive/costly to get. I have a lot of physical, real stuff. I have a lot of good real amps that I like. There are plug-in amps that sound pretty good. I definitely prefer the real ones. But you can still create with them. You don't have to say: I can't make a song right now because I don't have a PB5150 and a big cabinet and mics. You can plug right into something and get that sound. Now, I'm a little pickier, so I like having the real one, but it's not a limit. So if you're a songwriter, you don't need to say: I can't write a song until I get this or get that. You have the tools on any laptop right now to get you started.

Michael: So good. Awesome. So to recap, it sounds like what you're saying is that a good place to start is by listening to a bunch of songs and understanding the things that you resonate and to be inspired and to see the things you resonate with, to be able to determine what is it about those things that resonate with you and what is it that's unique about you that actually is different from all those different things that you were inspired by. And once you have that, then there's a lot of different tools around you can use. It's easier than ever now to actually produce music. There's less limitations, but it still kind of comes from that place of creativity and articulating: what is it that makes you special?

Tony: Yeah.

Michael: Awesome. Well, Hey, Tony, man, it's been great connecting today. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and share some lessons and insights from +25 years in the music industry.

Tony: Thanks!

Michael: So for anyone that's listening to this right now is interested in connecting more, or I don't know, reaching out related to music, collaboration abd things, what are the best places for them to go to dive deeper?

Tony: Always up for that. I guess I still use Facebook. Facebook's probably how I get the most messages, but I have my information, my website, email, text. I get a lot of music questions and I try to answer them. People will just send me just very random things like: I'm trying to hook these two things up or whatever. I try to help out and some people will follow me on Instagram, TheDeepEndStudio. And then I like to look at what other people are doing and then comment on things. And sometimes bands will find each other through my comment section or I'll share bands I'm working with and then I'll see another band’s doing a show with them and then they'll tell me: Oh, I saw them on your Instagram and that's how I connected. I mentioned that about booking people. There's just some people I know in the area that are just connected to so many people. So if you're in the Baltimore music scene and you want to find people, I humbly submit: if you follow me, you'll find a lot of them cause it's just what I do all the time. These are all my friends. So kinda use me to find more people. That's cool with me. Tony Corelli on Facebook, TheDeepEndStudio on Instagram. You had a discord. I just made one. You said that I've heard about Discord. I hadn't done it yet, but now I just made one. I don't do anything on Twitter. I made a LinkedIn years ago and I shouldn't have because every once in a while I'll check it and I got messages from people that think I'm going to read it. So I do have a little bit of a hard time keeping up with everything. I do really long days in the studio. Lately I've been doing full days with this band. Like we would do like 12-hour days and I just took on this big mixing project and I was just in the middle of the night working on other music till like 3-4 in the morning every day. And then up again, another session at 10 in the morning. It gets a little crazy, but I'm glad I like doing it. I'm glad it's enjoyable work.

Michael: That's important. For putting in hours like that, it's important that it's something that really helps you plug-in. Cool. Well, Tony, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access.

Tony: Cool. Thanks. 

Michael: Let's give a virtual round of applause for Tony.

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

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