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Issue #104
by L. Swift and Jeff McQ
Tim Schumann at Track Star Studios
Working with Josquin, not only has Tim improved his skills, but he says he’s learned a lot about the business side, as well. “Clients come first,” he says. “You know, like I think that there’s a lot to say for going above and beyond what a client asks for, but at the same time, not underselling yourself…We are more expensive than the other studios in town, maybe, or some of the smaller studios. But at the end, we’re giving you a professional sound that’s going to sound better than everyone else, so we don’t undersell ourselves.”
Tim’s hard work as an apprentice paid off. Today, he’s got a job at Track Star as one of the engineers—and, of course, keys to the studio. “We’ve got a steady stream of clients in the area,” he says. “And Josquin does a really good job of finding people. Like, he’s working with people who are in town from Germany right now, who are basically over here to record with him and then they’re going back… I do some recruiting as well. I get to make a little more money when I find clients and bring them in.”
Now in the process of building his career, Tim says getting in the studio as a Recording Connection apprentice was the best decision he could have made. “I’ve never been good at school,” he says, “I don’t know if it’s just because of too much A.D.D. or what, but sitting in a classroom and trying to learn never really works for me. It’s always something where hands-on and doing it on my own pace really…I can excel doing it that way. So that aspect of the program really drew me in. And another thing was the actual mentor style approach, foot-in-the-door kind of approach…It was really nice to have this thing where I could get educated and have a foot in the door toward the working career all at the same time.”
Of course, having a go-getter mentality is also a huge part of Tim’s success so far. “I’ll take what I can get out of this program,” he says, “take what I can get out of Track Star, and do everything I can to get success right now.”
RRFC: So you started off your career by DJing. What inspired you to begin producing your own music?
Taylor Franklyn: Well, honestly just getting a little bit bored just playing other people’s music. Before I started DJing, I was in a lot of bands and went down the route for a little while. The reason I got into DJing in the first place was having trouble locking down a good band…So I got into DJing to be a little bit more self-sufficient in music. Anyway, I think that’s one of the reasons. And then from there, just playing other people’s music and mixing wasn’t as satisfying as writing my own stuff.
RRFC: At what point did you decide that you wanted to incorporate more of your skills towards the audio engineering side?
Taylor: I used to work in an insurance company doing data entry, which is the most soulless job in the world. And so when I realized that I didn’t want to do something that I hate for the rest of my life, I started to make a career out of
.
RRFC: What type of clients do you guys typically service at Denver Media Center?
Taylor: So we do a lot of different things. On the commercial end of stuff, we do quite a bit of audio books, as well as audio for video and post production – lots of TV show kind of stuff. And then on the more creative side of things, dance music is the main niche for me personally. So I get a lot of ghost writing and clients coming in and having me produce their specific tracks for their specific needs, whether it be pop or different EDM stuff. And on top of that, we also do quite a bit of just standard band recording and tracking as well.
RRFC: Does it surprise you at all that there’s such an EDM scene in Denver?
Taylor: It doesn’t surprise me because I’ve lived here my whole life, and so I’ve seen the scene grow from the early 2000, late ‘90s to what it is today. It’s actually been really interesting to watch it grow, because it’s [gone from] super underground, street scene and trance to some of the biggest names in the dance music world coming out of Denver, which is just really interesting to watch.
RRFC: What projects have you been working on recently? Any artists or commercial work you want to talk about?
Taylor: Yeah, we just wrapped up an album for Transform DJs, and it’s like a 17 track, super huge album. I’m super excited about that. We got it mastered by one of the top mastering engineers in the world to sound super great. I’m super-stoked on that one. It’s an album called Never Alone.
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