Ready Set Record!

We recently had the chance to visit Ready Set Record in Franklin, Tennessee (south of Nashville) to get a first hand look at what many fans don’t often see in the music business – a recording studio. With all of the modern technologies out there, we feel that the recording process gets lost to the everyday music fan. In reality, the recording process is the most important part of the music business because it is the time where you develop your product (albums/singles/EPs). We spoke to one of the co-founders, Zac Litwack, and asked him to answer a few questions for us.

Don’t forget to check out their website page here, as well as follow them on twitter @TheStuMusic. We want to thank Zac (and other co-founder Nick Curtis) for taking time out of his busy schedule for answering a few questions for us as well as showing us around the studio! And if you need any recording done, we feel that you should give Zac or Nick a call – we were highly impressed with what we saw and heard.

Midnight Comes Once:  Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Zac Litwack: My name is Zac Litwack, and I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. I picked up the bass guitar in my early teens and started playing in school Jazz combos and orchestras. I was an elite athlete, but as my passion for music grew stronger, my passion for sports grew weaker. I was blessed to have a mentor who owned a commercial recording studio in Atlanta called Nickel and Dime Studios (Thanks for everything Larry). During High School I was frustrated with my mediocre bedroom recordings and finally built up enough courage to enter Nickel and Dime’s internship program. This internship shed first hand insight on how to effectively run a commercial recording studio and in return gave me the confidence to tackle big sessions of my own; not to mention I got to work with artists such as Sister Hazel, Indigo Girls and Shawn Mullins. Towards High School graduation, I decided to take my knowledge and experience further by enrolling in Middle Tennessee State Universities’ Recording Arts program. This is where I met my business partner, Nicholas Curtis, and together we refined our performance and engineering chops by running recording studios in Murfreesboro, TN throughout our college tenure.

MCO: At what point did you sit back and decide to dive right into this business? Have to admit, it is a big process to start a studio.

ZL: It is a big process to jumpstart a recording studio, but just like any business, you have to invest a lot of time and money on the front end, so you can receive a return on the backside. Yes, recording studios are struggling, yes, the music industry as a whole is hard pressed to redefine itself, but, unlike most people, we find it interesting and intriguing that we are at a turning point within the music industry. We are looking at our situation as opportunity, not a misfortune. We get to reinvent the Industry standard, how cool is that!

MCO: How long have you guys been in business? How has the journey been?

ZL: Looking back at the past five years, we can honestly say that the journey has been nothing but thrilling. Yeah, there were a lot of tears, heartaches and frustrating moments that made us want to pull out our hair and scream, but in the end, we had absolute fun while creating first-class music. Ready Set Record, LLC was established in April 2010, which coincided with the purchase of our new recording complex in Franklin, TN. We have slowly climbed the studio ladder; we started in bedrooms and have finally worked our way up to a truly professional recording environment. Between the real estate hunt (thanks for all your help Stephen), gaining the necessary funds to purchase this new real estate, and the constant budgeting for gear (I was on Ebay about five hours a day), the short term process has been arduous to say the least; but what our studio gives back has made this process more than worthwhile.

MCO: Seems like you have a lot of gear. For all of the people out there who aren’t instrument and equipment savvy, can you give us a brief rundown?

ZL: Our gear collection has been a work in progress for some time. We took the advice of seasoned engineers and producers on how to properly buy gear, that is, instead of buying a lot of mediocre gear, we save enough money to buy one really nice piece of gear. It’s like buying furniture; you can go out and buy some dinning room chairs at Target, which might be just a minor scratch to your bank account, but you are stuck in a situation that is limited and without longevity. Staying with the furniture analogy, instead of purchasing four chairs from Target, we purchase one from Pottery Barn. That being said, you still have to abide by a strict budget, and at the end of the day, we might have to settle for something a little less than absolute craftsmanship. We do the best we can by purchasing less often, but higher end. The basics of sound recording consist of a source, (electric or acoustic instruments that move air molecules, a way to capture that source (a microphone), a pre amp to amplify the low level signal that the microphone captures, a recording interface to properly map the sound and convert the analog signal to a digital signal, and a power amplifier to power the studio monitors, which is how you listen to the sound you captured. Any loose link in the chain can cause the sound, to well, sound worse. That is why it is important to have that higher end gear I was just talking about. High End gear coupled with experience and hard work can make a studio run efficiently. At the “Stu,” we host a variety of sources: Guitars such as Gibson Les Paul Custom and Standard, Fender American and Mexican Stratocasters and Telecasters, even vintage ones such as a mid 1970s Electra and Washburn Hawk. Our bass guitar collection consists of custom Italian maker Manne, and vintage funk basses such as an early 1980s Ibanez Blazer and a Peavey TL-Five. Our house drum kit is a wonderful Ddrum pocket ash kit with an assortment of snare drums like the Dennis Chambers Signature and the Pork Pie Little Squalor. Moving to the next phase in the chain, the microphone. Our most prized piece is a Neumann U47. You don’t see many of these microphones around, and it is by far the most realistic capturing device I have ever worked with. That along with industry standard microphones such a Neumann TLM-103, Shure SM-57s, Beta 52As, AKG D112s, Sennheiser 421bs and AKG c451s to name a few. As far as pre amps go, we house industry standard brands like Neve, Universal Audio and Presonus. We run a Pro Tools interface with Benchmark conversion, our Power Amp is a Bryston 4b, and our monitors are Dyn Audio BM15s matched with a Dyn Audio 12s subwoofer, an incredible signal chain to say the least.

MCO: The nickname that keeps popping up is the “stu”. We assume that is short for studio. Is there something more to that? Why go with a nickname?

ZL: Although our company name is Ready Set Record, LLC, we wanted a nickname for the studio, something short and catchy, and something that we could be known as around town. A good friend, client and session guitarist, Jordan Bartlett, started to call it “the Stu,” and well, it sort of stuck. We call are crew of musicians, engineers, and players, the Stu Crew. Most of us met at Middle Tennessee State University, and we are all beginning to develop very strong networks within the industry.

MCO: We noticed there is a section on the site about a webcast, can you give us a sneak peak as to what you’re going to do with that?

ZL: The Webcast will be a live feed from the Stu that will allow fans to stay in tune with the artist’s recording process. It will also allow fellow engineers and music enthusiasts to stay in touch with the Stu and even provide comments on recording procedure, microphone placement etc… It will also be a way for the common music lover to gain insight on how a musical product develops. And to tell you the truth, we have some fun at the Stu too, because in the end, that is what it’s all about. We want to be completely interactive, which will help raise awareness outside of the Nashville greater area. We usually have a hand held camera running at all times, and we have a You Tube channel setup so that fans can view these videos (Thestuchannel), but fixed cameras and a live webcast would ensure that every amazing moment is captured in its intimacy. We plan on having the webcast up and running by the end of this year.

MCO: For all those who are leaning on the fence about using your studio, here is a moment to give them an “elevator pitch”. What would you say to them?

ZL: Our portfolio speaks for itself, especially when we link that with the low production cost. We are different in that we pride ourselves in not practicing an hourly or daily payment method because we understand that every artist is different, and that every project is different. Even more so, Nick and I are trained musicians who read music and perform on sessions daily, and because of this, we cover every phase of the music production process, from performance, to tracking, to mixing, and even to mastering. When you amalgamate all of these aspects into a full project bundle, the artist and or songwriter is going to save a lot of money. A professional product that meets and exceeds budget expectations, that’s what RSR is all about. We take care of the client by giving him, her, or them a professional recording that will in turn, give them a greater chance to succeed within the crowded music industry. I remind my clients that it starts with the music, which is captured and produced through our services, without a professional version of that, the artist, label, songwriter and publishing company stands very little chance at success.

Q8: If readers or artists want to find out more information about you, where can they go?

ZL: They can visit our website at www.readysetrecord.net, but I encourage everybody to come visit the studio first hand, because after all, seeing and hearing is truly believing.
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