ON WHY HE LOVES TO HIRE RECORDING CONNECTION APPRENTICES:
“Our entire staff is people from Recording Connection. And it’s been like this since our older guy took the Recording Connection program 14 years ago and became an engineer here then moved to Nashville, opened his own studio in Tennessee…The reason is really simple: We work a very specific way. I like music producers a specific way. I have a lot of short cuts how to do it quick and good. And when an engineer has apprenticed here, it’s so much easier. If somebody leaves or wants to go somewhere else, the first place I’m going to look is who is my best student because he knows what we do. I’ve had engineers from other areas who’d learn on their own or from other schools, but they don’t know what we do, and I seriously question actually what they’ve learned.”
JUST A FEW OF THE STUDENTS AND GRADUATES WHO CONTINUE TO WORK WITH HIM:
“Phil [Higgins], he had done the program 12 years ago, even more. He moved to Nashville. Thomas [Burdett] took over. Phil opened his own studio in Nashville. And we work with him at least on a weekly basis…We still work with him hand in hand trading files and working on music together…[Thomas] is our main guy. He learned very quickly. He not only had music knowledge, plays multiple instruments, he has computer knowledge and electronics knowledge…That’s your all-around guy…Tim [Schumann], mainly, we use him for sessions…mainly recording, tracking, same with Hayden [Lewis]. They’re very fast on the computer, great editing skills…Aaron [Castro] mainly focuses on doing all our dance programming, electronic stuff…he did both programs, the basic program and the master’s program.”
Control Room in Track Star Studios
We take our job very seriously, “We even have a dress code. We have a dress code for apprentices too. Basically, we have all these rules to follow, how you behave around an artist, how you behave around celebrities, because we do have celebrities coming through. And it’s a great environment. So I look for usually people of any age but they must understand and love today’s music…They’re also usually very good on computers. They always bring in new music for us to get accustomed with, so basically, people skills, technical skills, and some understanding of music are important.”
ON THE BENEFITS AND EXPOSURE HIS APPRENTICES RECEIVE:
“When people study here, they not only learn the hands-on of what you’re going to do every day, but they’re literally working on projects that are going on the air. When you study at Track Star, you can walk out, and you’re not only going to have the experience, but you’re going to have some names on your resume. We do all the music for MTV Catfish, the TV show. So if I have students who work on that in some form, I tell them, “You can put that on your resume, that you worked on MTV Catfish.” We used to do Pimp My Ride, Cribs, all these different shows, Teen Mom. It’s a big plus to come to Track Star, because it’s not only the skills and the real life experience, but it’s also some form of credits when you walk out of here.”
ON WHY HE LOVES WHAT HE DOES:
“I love doing it. Every day, I get up, and I do music. That’s a big plus. And I’ve been doing music for 40 years professionally. I’ve never had a day job in my entire life. But this is my day job, basically.”
Film Connection apprentice Daren Frease (Austin, TX) recently went on set with mentor Christine Chen of Moth to Flame Films to work a commercial shoot for a local advertising company!
“Traditional culinary education to me is the apprenticeship mentorship approach. This is the way our culinary industry started out. I believe the mentorship approach to culinary education is a sound one. The profit loss statement of every culinary operation looks to productivity and efficiency as its number one priority. Having to re-teach culinary graduates is not only inefficient but also costly and time-consuming”
— Bill Bracken, Owner of “Bracken’s Kitchen” Food and Beverage Consulting, Los Angeles, CA
