Recording - August 2014 - 48

is a plus in these environments. She arrived from Mexico City two
days before the session and gained everyone's respect immediately.
You successfully used the Indiegogo platform to finance
your album. Could you comment on your experience? It
seems like "crowdfunding" is one of the only options for
independent artists these days.
It was thrilling, amazing, and nerve-wracking, all in one. It is
very different to lead a band with money than without. I spent
Greg at the console

four months preparing for the launch of my campaign: producing
a video, the content of the perks, and figuring out who my target
audience/backers were going to be. Then, for the 45 days of the
campaign, I clocked 12 hours a day to bring the money in. It was
very hard at times to convince people that a project is transcendent, relevant, and worth their hard-earned money!

The Space: Greg Curtis of The Bridge
Vocalist Areni Agbabian
How did you communicate with Greg and the conductor
Marc Lowenstein since you were playing drums during the
sessions? Did you find this challenging, since you had written every note? There must be a lot of trust involved.
During one of the early rehearsals things did not go very well and
I started to look for a conductor. I was advised by one of the members
to contact Marc Lowenstein. He made the band sound from "good"
to "great" instantly, and started sculpting my music and bringing things
out I did not know were there. Moreover, it freed me up to "float" more
and breathe with the band, rather than having to pummel everyone
with a square time-keeping approach. Marc has a great ability to nail
the right tempos for the songs and we agreed on everything.
Tell me about the engineer who is mixing the CD.
I invited classical producer/engineer Valeria Palomino [VicePresident of AES, Latin America] to produce the session and edit the
album. I have known her for many years and trust her ears and good
taste; she is an expert in producing high-pressure sessions with orchestras and is also a consummate musician. She oversaw the pacing of
the session along with Marc, and was the one calling the shots on
whether we had the right take or not. She really kept us on our toes
and in check, and she does it with elegance and a big smile, which
48

RECORDING August 2014

Greg Curtis began building his own speakers as a teenager
while playing professionally in bands and orchestras. As a
music performance undergraduate student in college, Greg
complemented his formal music training by working as a FOH
engineer at well-known rock clubs in Milwaukee, WI. After
earning his Master's degree in Music Performance he moved to
Los Angeles, performing with and recording some of the
world's best talent in Hollywood. Seeing a need for "a modern,
no-excuses recording studio," Greg built and opened The
Bridge Recording in 2010.
The Bridge Recording (thebridgerecording.com) is indeed a
gorgeous-and very busy-studio. It was very cool to find out
that countless scores for The Simpsons have been recorded there,
as have the scores for an impressive number of pop albums, as
well as shows and movies we've all watched. Considering this
studio has only been operating for less than five years, the track
record is mind-boggling. The studio was designed by Jay
Kaufman (of Ocean Way fame; kaufmanandassociates.net),
someone I'm hoping to interview for Recording soon.
Greg was extremely candid and generous about all the details
pertaining to the Gurrisonic sessions, which he engineered himself. Curtis is a stickler for detail, and as recording geeks we
should feel very lucky to have access to the mic and outboard setting lists for these complicated sessions-See Figure 2.

http://www.thebridgerecording.com http://www.kaufmanandassociates.net

Recording - August 2014

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