Michael Walker: All right. Excited to be here today with my new friend, Dave Hagen. Dave is a Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer who spent over a decade at Dark Horse Recording Studios, helping hundreds of artists craft unique, powerful music across different genres. He's known for his precision and creativity, combining traditional Nashville expertise with modern production to deliver radio-ready tracks and award-winning results.

And yeah, I was just telling Dave right before the podcast earlier today—I was looking up Dark Horse Studio, and I was just absolutely blown away by how incredible of a place it is. At some point, I would love to go there with our Modern Musician team or with our community in some way. I'm sure that at some point, I would love to have a chance just to be there.

But I also just saw a big list of all the artists and the magic that has come out of it. So I'm really excited to connect with Dave today to talk a little bit about his experience as it relates to taking your music and turning it from an idea into a real, tangible thing—and how to actually reach and touch people with it.

Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Dave Hagen: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you, and we'll have some fun.

Michael: Heck yeah. So maybe to start things out, could you just share a little bit about your story and how you came to become the head producer at Dark Horse?

Dave: I'm just a rural kid from Missouri. I got into music the way a lot of people did—through band. But, you know, tuba wasn’t getting me any girlfriends, so I picked up a guitar, and that worked much better.

So I kind of got into music. I thought maybe I would do the professional musician thing—maybe tour, maybe be a session player. I wasn’t sure. And I was pretty good for Roche, Missouri, which is my hometown. Then I met some real guitar players, and I thought, "Well, you know what? Maybe I'll be on the other side of the glass for those folks."

I knew a couple of people who had home studios, and that kind of gave me the bug to get into recording. So I decided to jump right in and get into the engineering side of things. It’s a really nice fit for my kind of logical, analytical brain. But also, I'm kind of split between that and the creative side, so I get to really immerse myself in both.

I went to a four-year school, and, you know, I didn’t learn very much. I decided, "I gotta get out of this. I gotta get out of Missouri. I gotta go to a music city." And Nashville was very much my vibe.

So I went out, toured all the different studios, did internship interviews at, you know, basically the whole first page or two of Google. My last stop that day was at Dark Horse. When you get up there, it’s kind of out in the country. It’s meant to be everything that the typical Music Row Nashville little box isn’t. It’s meant to be a creative place—a retreat where you’re private and you’re not so worried about schedules.

So we pulled up, and it was like, "Oh, okay. I feel like I’m at some mountain resort or a lodge up in the Rockies." I really had to beg my way into an internship there because they asked me the typical questions:

“Do you know how to use this console?”

“Well, no, but I learn fast.”

“Do you know how to use Pro Tools?”

“No, but I learn fast.”

“Do you know how to use…”—you know, whatever.

So I had to prove myself and basically learned on the job—almost everything—just as an intern. Fortunately, Dark Horse has a pretty good system for training up interns. It’s organized and intentional, which is not the case at a lot of places.

Robin Crow, the owner, has always been really good about letting interns use the space whenever it’s open to make sure they’re ready. So I put in tons and tons of hours—learning the space, getting in on sessions, and getting my skills up. That way, when I was assisting, I could make an impression and hopefully stop being an intern and go be a professional.

I interned probably a year and a half or so until I had senior status and could beg my way into sessions. And, like you mentioned, when you look at a studio’s website, you’ll see a list of artists who have worked there. For me, being a guitar player and a rock kid, one of those names was this band, Relient K, which was a pop-punk, really fun band.

I knew all of their songs on guitar, and it was just a good entry point for me. They came through, and they were on the schedule all of a sudden. I saw that, and I was like, “Hey, Robin, you gotta put me on this session. This is my session.”

They were just doing some overdubs on a small release—just some piano stuff. So I set up some mics, and then I sat on the couch the rest of the day while they worked. It was just a cool experience to meet them.

I did the thing that you always do when you're working with a producer or an artist—“Hey, if you ever need anything, give me a call.” I made sure they got my number, offered to help however I could.

And then, you know, what always happens happened—nobody called me. Nothing came of it.

Then a couple of months later, that producer came back out with another artist I had never heard of. It was a cool artist and a fun project. I got to assist on that and did the same thing: “Hey, if you ever need anything, give me a call.”

And then, one or two days later, I got a phone call. I remember clearly—I was painting the ceiling of one of the rooms at Dark Horse. I got a call, and it was Mark Townsend, the producer for Relient K and a bunch of other stuff.

He says, “Hey, do you do drugs?”

“No.”

“Okay. You want to help me finish out this project? I can’t pay you anything on this one, but, you know, after that, maybe we’ll figure something out.”

So I went out to his studio, about an hour south of Nashville, and spent the next couple of weeks finishing out vocals.

Kind of another happenstance—his former assistant was moving up in the world and had done the vocal tuning on this project. But when it came to us, there were some glitches, and we decided to retune the whole thing. Mark asked me, “Hey, do you know how to tune vocals?”

I said, “Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Let me watch you do one to make sure I’m doing it your way.”

So I watched him very carefully—watched his fingers hit all the buttons. And I kind of learned how to do it his way. Mostly, I learned how to do it at all.

Then I did half the record, and he did the other half of the vocal tuning. At that point, he was like, “Okay, you’re a useful person to have around.”

I ended up assisting and working with him for, I think, two or three years. In that process, I got to do a couple of Relient K records.

Meanwhile, I kept going back to Dark Horse, engineering projects that came through. I stayed on the radar in case they needed anybody. “Hey, you got my number.”

A couple of years later, Robin Crow decided to start a school. We had been training interns for a long time, myself included, and he decided, “Let’s make this a real program.”

That was in 2011, about 14 years ago now. I’ve been doing it ever since. I taught that audio engineering program for 10 years while being one of the two engineers at the studio. I've been head engineer most of that time.

And yeah, it's been a fun ride. That's how I got here.

Michael: That's awesome. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. One thing that I'm very grateful for is just the opportunity to have conversations with folks like yourself and hear the patterns and the things that a lot of people say are a part of their journey.

One thing that really stands out about what you just shared was the role of internships and showing up—learning by doing as opposed to just learning theories isolated away from the actual practice of it. I just had a conversation with the head of A&R at SoundCloud yesterday, and he said the exact same thing. He got started with an internship, and he learned by doing. He surrounded himself with those people that were already doing it.

Yeah, it's amazing that you've created a program and a way to actually give people the education that they need—not separate from the actual practice but actually getting them into the field and doing it.

I'm curious—you've both done this yourself and become an amazing engineer as well as taught and helped so many musicians learn it themselves. I'm sure you start to see some similar patterns of the biggest mistakes, challenges, or struggles that artists and engineers face when they first get started. What are some of the biggest ones you see when you first start teaching artists?

Dave: Since I taught for 10 years and now I'm the director of education at the school, I'm still very much involved in that process. I've seen a big change. In the last 13 years, I've seen the challenges that people face shift and change.

I feel like when I started and when the school started, the typical challenge was, "How do I show people what I can do? How do I get my name out there?" First of all, how do you get good enough to impress people? But then, how do you connect with people? How do you let them know that you're an asset to them and that you should be the one they hire?

That's always a challenge because it relies on a very different set of skills. The studio stuff is one thing—you've got to be able to make music. The other set of skills is very much like, you're out there, you're campaigning, you're meeting people, you're connecting with people.

I've always felt like the skills that get someone elected president don't necessarily translate to whether they're a good president—or any other political office. So, people skills for nerds like myself are the real struggle.

The last few years—maybe half a dozen years or so, definitely post-COVID—I feel like the challenges have shifted a little bit. That's still there, but because our access is so huge now—to the world, to the internet, to the ability to work remotely—I feel like the biggest challenges I’m seeing with up-and-comers are their own time management, personal motivation, and their ability to direct their energy in a place that's really productive.

Right now, things are expensive. Living in a music town like Nashville is expensive, so people have to make an income while they’re going to school, interning, and building their network. That can steal a lot of their enthusiasm and energy for what they’re actually passionate about, which is getting into this music thing.

My personal recommendation for them is always: go find a job you really don’t like, but find a job that’s flexible. If you find a job that you really like—maybe you're working at a cool spot, like Guitar Center, selling really nice guitars—you kind of lose the enthusiasm for getting out of there and the personal motivation to go grind on the thing that actually matters to you.

So I think that’s probably my answer to that. That’s a big problem I see right now.

Michael: That's really interesting advice, especially that last part. I like how you recommend finding something that can help keep you afloat while you're still in that internship phase, but intentionally choosing something that you don’t actually like. That pressure, that tension of not enjoying it, can actually be something that gives you more direction back toward the thing you really care about.

A big part of that is also finding something flexible—something where, when a gig pops up, you can say, "Hey, I'm not coming in today," and they won't fire you for that. That’s a huge part of being available for the career and passion you have.

Cool. So it sounds like you've seen things shift over time. Something that’s been true, but maybe isn't as big of an issue as it used to be, is people skills and social dynamics.

I can really relate. In high school, I was a very shy, awkward kid, and that was something I always struggled with. But, like you’re saying, I realized how important it is to build those relationships, network, show up, and connect. Even the story you shared earlier was a great example of how you clearly showed up and put yourself out there whenever you could. You were like, "Yeah, I can be useful, I’m happy to contribute, provide value."

Even when you weren’t getting a lot in return for it, you showed up so you could get the experience, which seems like a common thread in a lot of success stories.

Aside from people skills and developing relationships and networking, what do you think separates people who don’t have that consistency, perseverance, or willingness to stick with it during that initial phase from those who make it through the internship phase and land clients?

Dave: Some people just have this drive and passion. Just like some people have a natural gift for singing or engineering, some people just have it innately—it’s part of who they are. You can spot those people from a mile away.

I don’t want to say anything bad about those people—I think that’s amazing. But that doesn’t mean others are doomed to failure.

Maybe the interesting way to discuss this is: what’s the thing that shuts people down? You can talk a lot about what motivates people, but that’s different for everybody. The things that shut us down, though, are all very similar.

We’re mostly creatives. We’re in tune with the emotional response of music, how this stuff works, and what makes it powerful. That’s what gets us into this. But as creatives, being in tune with our emotional state, we often tie our self-worth to our successes—our creativity and how others respond to our creativity, our products, and our mixes.

When people start to feel their self-worth declining because they’re not getting the response they want—no one's listening to their mixes, the streaming isn’t happening, whatever that looks like—it can be really painful. When things get painful, we avoid them, we shy away from them, and suddenly, our efforts and enthusiasm trickle away.

I always reference the Dunning-Kruger curve with our students. Have you ever heard of Dunning-Kruger?

Michael: It's ringing a bell, but I'm not sure.

Dave: It’s a cognitive bias. It's one of those things our brains just innately get wrong. It’s the connection between our opinion of our ability and our actual ability.

Michael: I have heard that, yeah.

Dave: What you'll find is that people with very low ability or very low experience—and those are often interchangeable—kind of on the entry-level side of being a guitar player, like I found myself. I had very high confidence as a guitar player in Roche, Missouri, and that gave me great self-confidence and self-worth. I was very excited about guitar, and I was enthusiastic and pumped about everything I did. My terrible guitar tones and out-of-tune playing and all this stuff were very exciting to me.

As I became more skilled and more aware and grew my ability, suddenly I was like, "Oh, I'm not as good as I thought I was." My self-confidence dropped. Every bit of improvement I was making was hurting my feelings and making it frustrating. For some people, that's a great drive—they get mad and just put the hours in. For a lot of people, it kind of shuts them down a little bit.

So I always warn my students: you're coming out of school, you're going to feel like you know what you're doing, and your confidence is going to be higher than ever. Then you're going to hit the real world, and you're going to run up against people that have been doing this for 30 years, and they're going to be a lot better than you.

You're going to turn in mixes that your clients aren’t going to like because they just had another mix done by someone who's been doing it for 30 years—29 years longer than you have. That can really hurt your feelings, drop your self-confidence, and lower your enthusiasm.

So I always have to—even myself—play this mental game of like, "You know what, that mix wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, but that means I improved my awareness of what is good. My taste has improved a little bit more. My awareness of the mistakes I might make has gone up, so my next mix will be better because my last mix was worse."

I have to remind myself that this is a growth process and that someday, at some point, I'll be happy with this.

On the flip side of the Dunning-Kruger thing, where inexperienced people have a lot of confidence, experienced people tend to have less confidence than they should. Their opinion of their ability is lower, and that’s where this kind of imposter syndrome kicks in.

Maybe you've been playing guitar on the road for 10 years or working in studios for 10 years. Then you start meeting these people that are really great, and they’re recognizing your skill and your greatness, but you're not—because you're seeing theirs. Suddenly, you're undervaluing yourself and feeling like, "Oh, I don't belong in this space with these people."

That's another trap our brains get us into, and we have to actively fight our way back out of that.

Michael: That's super interesting. Yeah, I feel like I’d heard that before with the curve and how people at the top of their game tended to undervalue their experience, whereas the people just below them would tend to overvalue it.

Super interesting.

So what I'm hearing you say is that a really important part is just the mindset—the growth mindset—of coming into it, being humble, and being willing to learn.

And actually being willing to be uncomfortable—facing the discomfort of growing and becoming more aware of the fact that you're not perfect and that you have issues.

But actually, when you see that, reframing it as, "That’s actually a positive thing, and that’s something to lean into and learn from," as opposed to something I should try to avoid.

Dave: Yeah, absolutely. I have a quick-ish story about that.

Michael: Yeah.

Dave: I did a mix for a client once. I was happy with it. The client was happy with it. We approved it and sent it off to a mastering engineer.

We were referred to a mastering engineer—longtime pro, excellent ears, incredible engineer, better mixer than me, better mastering engineer than me, and has worked with major artists.

So I was a little nervous, like a lot of people are, sending their tracks off to be critiqued and fixed by somebody.

A day later, he worked on it a little bit, sent it back, and said, "I'm sorry, I just can't put my name on this."

Michael: Wow.

Dave: That was such a painful email to read. I had the urge to just be like, "Screw that guy." Everybody was happy with this mix. What's your deal? Just master it. You don’t have to promote it or anything—just do your job.

I had that urge, this innate self-defense mechanism to protect myself, to just shut it out.

Then I realized, man, I want to work with this guy. This is a person I want to be in my process.

So how can I improve this? I just gave him a call and said, "Hey man, can you tell me why? What are you hearing right now? I would love to fix this. I’d even come out to your studio, pay you for your time—can you help me fix this rather than just ending this process?"

And he goes, "Oh yeah, well, I was just hearing some distortion on the side channels."

And I was like, "Oh, I think I can fix that. We can workshop this, and I can get you a mix that works great."

He said, "You know what, I think it might be your summing. I’ve heard rumors of this thing happening. Why don’t you bring your tracks over here, and we’ll mess with it at my place?"

Oh, heck yeah.

So I got to go to his studio, hear my tracks in his room, and suddenly, I was hearing my mistakes. He pointed stuff out. I took it back, tweaked it, fixed it, sent it off, and he goes, "Oh, killer. That’s great. Let’s go with it."

Whew. That was an incredible experience—elation at the end of the process, knowing that we got there, that I did something he was happy with.

But also knowing that if I can just be humble and ask for help from people further along than me, they’re happy to do it in most cases.

He even got back with me a couple of days later and said, "You know what, I was thinking about that. That was a really cool way you approached that. If you ever need anything, let me know. I’m happy to help."

So I earned a friend out of that—not just a master or the payment for that mix.

Michael: Wow, that’s a great story. Thank you for sharing that.

I'm curious—what I'm hearing from that is a level of awareness or a willingness to separate from the attachment to that product as a reflection of self-worth.

You were able to let go, even though you felt that twinge of self-defense and ego wanting to protect itself.

You were able to separate from that and say, "You know what? Maybe I can actually learn something here and use this as an opportunity to grow."

What’s your advice for developing that muscle of awareness or separation from attachment?

Because I feel like that's such an important part of growth, but it doesn’t come easily.

Dave Hagen: No, man. I would say start small. Don’t turn in a final mix to a big mastering engineer and then see how you react.

Start with humility in the early stages. Wherever you are right now, ask someone nearby what they think.

"Tell me your thoughts on this mix. What are you hearing right now? What can I tweak?"

Start that process before you finish it so that you're already saying, "Okay, I'm open to suggestion and input."

You may not agree with everything they say, and it may not match your style or vision, but just starting that process in small ways helps.

My assistants who work with me at the studio and help run sessions—when we have full tracking sessions, I'm running 40 inputs with seven different players, and there's a lot going on. My assistants are a key part of making it all work.

My favorite assistants—the ones I always seek out—come to me at the end of the day with a list of questions: "Hey, what could I have done better? How could that have run more smoothly?"

Those are the people I want to help as much as I possibly can.

Start small. Start early. Wherever you’re at, just ask small questions. Over time, you start to recognize the difference between the work and your own value.

Michael: That's super helpful. Yeah. What that reminds me of is, I feel like I've heard a lot of people who are smarter than I am really harp on the value of curiosity and a hunger to learn and grow. And what you just shared there kind of spoke to that. Like, you notice they're very curious or they're hungry to grow.

They want to learn. They ask for your advice, and they don't take it personally. They have that curiosity or that drive or that itch to grow. Cool.

Yeah, for someone that might be listening or watching this right now who maybe has big goals or ambition and really wants to become one of the renowned mixing engineers—or more so, maybe they just want to create amazing music—and they are struggling with getting an initial foothold. They feel maybe it's very saturated and it's hard to get that initial relationship or connection.

How do you recommend they get started with developing that?

Dave: The first step is always to get to where the music's happening. You've got to be nearby where the good stuff is going down. You've got less chance—it's much more difficult if you're doing everything remotely. So even if it's a temporary solution, go find where the music's being made and find a way to be valuable to that process.

Don't expect that anybody will bring you in at the high levels. If you're an unknown engineer, you're not going to walk into the doors of a major label, and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, why don't you produce this for me?" or "Why don't you mix this song for me? We'll see how it goes with the next Adele single."

That's just not going to happen. But you are potentially likely to get your foot in the door at a low level in a place where that stuff is happening. You might come in as the assistant or the runner on those sessions. You might work your way up to the person who's doing basic track edits, nudging things around, and prepping the mix.

You might be responsible for tuning the mix or tuning the vocals on a bigger record or doing the rough mix for the mix engineer. And you kind of work your way up into these places where suddenly you are at a very high level with your skills, and the people around you who are already there recognize that. Then they start trying to bring you in on your next level, whatever that is.

I think being a home studio owner someplace other than a music city is totally legit as a career path, and it's a really exciting and interesting way to be involved in music daily. But it does present its own challenges if what you're trying to do is get into mainstream, bigger stuff.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right path for a lot of people. A lot of people really value just working with musicians that are great and are on their journey as well. In those cases, the way you can grow that network and build your skill set at the same time is to always undersell and over-deliver.

If you're not certain that you can get them a radio-ready mix, don't charge enough for that. Charge less than you think they are expecting and over-deliver. Give them the best possible mix you can. Spend your own time, invest your own time into figuring out how to make this thing great.

And then they're going to come back for sure. If you come in like a used car salesman and just sell them on all of your services and how great you are and how amazing their experience is going to be—even if you are—they're just going to feel like their expectations were met. And they're not going to be that enthusiastic about returning and bringing back that next thing.

Michael: Smart. Yeah. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that to start with, you have to surround yourself with the people where the magic's happening. Your odds are significantly more likely if you just find a way to surround yourself there.

But also, in combination with that, if you surround yourself but then you're just a jerk or you're not providing value, then it's not actually helpful. In fact, it might be the opposite.

Dave: Yeah. You can get shut out of those spaces pretty quickly if you're not performing.

Michael: So, first of all, find a way to surround yourself with people that are doing what you want to do to learn from them. But then also, show up with the right attitude, where you're looking to provide value and over-deliver.

Rather than posturing or overselling—if you oversell and then you do great, it's like the expectation was met. But if you undersell and over-deliver, it really helps people remember you and builds a better relationship.

Dave: Yeah. I often feel like in those relationships, when you approach things with humility and genuinely want to know if you're delivering what they actually wanted, they will become your biggest champions.

They'll say, "Oh man, no, you're killing it! Let me go talk to these other people. They're going to want to get in on this as well."

If you oversell, people become skeptical. They're not going to spread the word in the same way.

Michael: That makes a lot of sense. And that story you told earlier, about how you responded in the right way, flips on a light switch. Like, "Wow, that's actually really cool. It was refreshing that this person had humility, was humble, and was willing to learn."

That led to you building a relationship and a friendship. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's usually a better approach to show up, provide value, and over-deliver on expectations. And that's going to lead to them wanting to recommend you to other people as well.

Dave: That's the hope.

Michael: Awesome. Well, I know you've spent the last more than a decade basically taking everything you've steeped yourself in, in terms of the culture of mixing, making music, and creating magic. And now you've also been able to help share that with education as well.

I'm curious, for anyone here that's listening to this who's interested in learning more about that and what you're doing, could you share a little bit more about the workshops and what's a good way for people to get involved?

Dave: Yeah. So, Dark Horse Institute, like I said, kind of came out of Dark Horse Recording and just the experience we had training people. We've really turned it into its own thing.

And sort of like Dark Horse was the alternative to the standard, classic concrete box studios, we wanted the school to be refreshing—its own experience that didn’t feel like going to school. It felt like on-the-job training.

So, the audio engineering program started just in our regular studio, and we pretty quickly realized the students would be better served if we built our own space. Now we have a separate place with a big Trident studio—the original Trident from Dark Horse Recording—an SSL, and a couple more rooms for mixing. There's a whole bunch of Pro Tools rigs and all that stuff.

So it's its own space, fully functional. In there, we run an audio engineering program that’s 20 weeks long, five hours a day, five days a week. It very much feels like an immersive experience, like you are a full-time professional engineer.

Now, once you actually are, it’s going to be a lot more than five hours a day, but it feels like plenty, and it’s a good pace. We can get you through all the technical stuff in 20 weeks, as well as have time to practice. In that process, we'll record two different bands—just outside bands with real hopes and dreams.

We do our best to get a full capture of their EP and also help you build your portfolio. Because when you leave a recording school, or any school—especially in the music industry—very rarely am I asked about my resume. People just say, "What have you done? What can I listen to?"

They ask, "Send me some mixes that you’ve done." That’s how you get hired.

So we have an audio engineering program. After a while, we realized we could help people grow even more if we explored the business side, not just the technical side. So, we run a music business program. It’s now 15 weeks.

Again, we have one in person, and it's five hours a day, five days a week. It’s a full-on immersion into what it takes to develop an artist—from just a talent to someone that can get signed by a label, manage their own label, or distribute independently, where they get to keep all their own money.

How does that work? What are the pieces and parts? What sort of team do you need to build?

Actually, just this morning, our music business class—set to graduate tomorrow—was pitching to industry professionals. I know there was someone from Universal, a management company, and a few other people.

We tend to bring in a bunch of professionals. We scout talent, develop that talent, and at the end of the program, they pitch those artists to the real music industry.

It’s meant to be a mock pitch where we’re just practicing, but in reality, we’ve actually gotten, I think, four or five artists signed in the last couple of years. They’re real talent. We record them in the studio, I mix them, and it's a really fun process.

We also have a songwriting class that’s been running for four or five years now. It’s 15 weeks long and called "Composition and Songwriting."

We cover everything from music theory to lyric techniques and sync writing. There are three main ways to make money in the music industry—merchandise, touring, and sync placements.

If you get your song placed in a commercial or a TV show, there’s a lot more cash coming in than if you get a million streams on Spotify. So, we make sure people know how to do that—how to market themselves to music supervisors, how to write for an artist, and how to write for themselves.

For their final project, students do big co-writes, and we record all their demos. They leave with a portfolio tracked at the big studio. We bring in outside musicians to make sure the demos sound really good. It's a super fun process.

Starting at the end of March—March 24, 2025—we’re launching a brand-new program called "Advanced Mixing."

It’s designed for engineers who are already out there—interning, assisting, or running a home studio. Since it's online, I can connect with people anywhere. The idea is to build a program that combines the best of what we already do—hands-on, real-world interaction and mentorship.

I'm a huge believer in mentorship.

People interested in this kind of thing are already watching PureMix and Mix With The Masters. These companies create great content, but they fall short in critiquing your work.

You might watch a top mixer show you a technique, then practice it and do it wrong somehow—but no one’s there to help guide you through that process.

This program is 50/50—half content that I’ll create myself (plus interviews with professionals) and half mentorship. Twice a week, we’ll do live sessions—three hours each—where we stream mixes back and forth, workshop everything, and fine-tune the details.

I’m really excited about it. I think it’ll help take engineers to the next level, where they can start turning in high-level, professional mixes.

Michael: What an incredible resource. We are so lucky to be living in a time where we have access to this kind of learning.

Dave: Yeah, and it’ll be very much like you and I talking here—where we can interact directly. We’ll both be in front of our speakers or headphones. It’s going to be a pretty powerful experience. I’m excited about it.

Michael: Very cool.

For anyone listening or watching right now who’s interested in what you just shared, where should they go to dive deeper?

Dave: The first place would be our website—darkhorseinstitute.com.

We’ve got all the information there, and you can contact us about any particular program. If you take all three of our in-person classes, you can be done with your whole audio/music education within a year.

I think that’s pretty powerful. My audio graduates get about a three-and-a-half to four-year head start on my career and spend a whole lot less money.

We’ve designed the schedule and the price point around what serves the student best—not what serves our pocketbook best.

Michael: That’s amazing.

As always, we’ll put all the links in the show notes for easy access.

Dave, man, it’s been great connecting, hearing your story, and piecing together these different perspectives. It’s very helpful and inspiring for me.

Thank you for the work you’re doing for artists everywhere, and thank you for joining the podcast today.

Dave: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This was fun.

Michael: YEAAAH!